One network, several kinds of space
Ethereum fees once looked like a single thermometer for demand: expensive meant busy and cheap meant forgotten. Blobs make that reading too simple. Ethereum separated data needed by rollups from ordinary transaction execution in the virtual machine.
For users, this often appears as lower fees on layer-two networks. For the protocol, it means a new block resource and a separate price market. Comparing today's average fee with a previous cycle without acknowledging that change is like using one number to compare passenger fares and freight rates.
Why rollups need data
Rollups execute many operations away from Ethereum and then publish proofs and data back to the base layer. This lets them inherit settlement guarantees and data availability without making each user action compete for the most expensive blockspace.
Before blobs, that publication used ordinary calldata. It was reliable but costly, and it stored data more permanently than rollups require. Blob data is available long enough for verification and recovery without adding the same permanent burden to every node.
A more precise fee market
There is now a price for execution and a price for blob data. They can move independently. The base layer can be quiet while rollups actively publish data, or a popular mainnet application can raise execution fees without much blob demand.
That makes scaling better but analysis harder. A low average fee does not prove Ethereum has no users. Activity may have moved into L2s where users pay less while Ethereum continues to settle and secure the system underneath.
The takeaway
Blobs did not remove Ethereum's role. They made the architecture clearer: execution, settlement and data availability have different loads and different markets. Useful analytics should follow that structure.