Ethgas Raises $12m As Buterin Revives Gas Futures Debate 2025
ETHGas announced a $12 million seed raise as Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin reignited discussion around onchain gas futures and fee-hedging mechanisms
Ethereum blockspace trading platform ETHGas announced it has raised $12 million in a seed round led by Polychain Capital.
The funding announcement comes after Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin recently discussed the idea of an onchain “gas futures” market, arguing that such a product could give users a clearer signal of expected fees and let them hedge future costs.
ETHGas argues that Ethereum needs “a reimagination of the way blockspace is allocated on the network” and claims that its newly-launched blockspace trading platform is a step in that direction. The company said the market launched with $800 million in commitments from validators, builders and other participants.
Related: Ethereum could get faster in January with gas limit rise to 80M
In addition to making blockspace a tradable commodity, ETHGas aims to make Ethereum significantly faster — an initiative the company calls “Real-Time Ethereum.” The company claims that purchasable blockspace commitments, called “pre-confirmations,” allow participants “to secure execution at defined points in time.”
ETHGas founder Kevin Lepsoe said this implementation is upstream of current block production services, which are routinely leveraged by maximum extractable value (MEV) bots. Lepsoe explained that the Realtime Ethereum splits the block into “240 pieces of 50ms each” to achieve sub-block guaranteed transaction times.
Still, Lepsoe admitted that there are “some centralizing vectors” in the system. ETHGas can purportedly increase Ethereum validator rewards by up to eight or 10 times if all Ethereum were made real-time and automated market makers paid in exchange for blockspace, incentivizing centralization.
He suggested that this is a continuation of an already-existing trend. “Blockbuilders + Relays like Titan, and Ultrasound already process perhaps 50% of the blocks on Ethereum, so there are centralization concerns already in place,“ he said.
Lepsoe said that “to the extent that we are successful,” ETHGas would set up multiple nodes with a leader-election process to mitigate risks arising from this centralization. Still, he acknowledged that such an initiative would necessitate additional effort and community engagement.
Source: CoinTelegraph
