Ethereum’s Co-Founder Proposes Idea For Onchain Gas Futures

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has floated the idea for an onchain futures market for gas, which could give users certainty over transaction fees as the network becomes more widely adopted.

In a post on X on Saturday, Buterin argued that the market needs a “good trustless onchain gas futures market,” as people have been questioning him over the certainty of low gas fees via current price reduction methods in Ethereum’s roadmap.

Buterin outlined that one way to address the uncertainty would be to enable users to essentially lock in prices for specific times in the future, as he outlined one potential market for Ethereum Base fees — a crucial factor in the overall gas fees. 

How an Ethereum gas futures market would work

In a traditional futures market, contracts are offered to buy or sell assets, such as oil, at a set price in the future, enabling investors to speculate on price changes and producers to hedge against future risks. 

In an Ethereum context, the futures market would essentially do the same, offer gas fees at set prices at future time windows, allowing users of the network to potentially save on future price spikes if they occur.

As such, a well-established and reliable futures market would provide a key metric for the ecosystem to speculate, plan or build around.

“An onchain gas futures market would help solve this: people would get a clear signal of people’s expectations of future gas fees, and would even be able to hedge against future gas prices, effectively prepaying for any specific quantity of gas in a specific time interval,” he said. 

A functional prediction market such as this would provide an essential service for users with heavy volume on the network, such as traders, builders, applications and institutions, who require a level of certainty for projecting operation costs.