Vitalik proposes‘gas futures contracts’ on Ethereum

Vitalik Buterin — the founder of Ethereum — has recently put forward a noteworthy idea: building a market for gas fee futures contracts (gas futures) directly on Ethereum. The goal is not to make gas cheaper, but to allow users, applications, and businesses to lock in future transaction costs in advance, thereby avoiding sudden shocks when the network becomes congested and gas fees spike.

This idea is not an official EIP, nor is it an immediate implementation plan. Rather, it is a proposal at the level of economic mechanism design. Even so, it clearly reflects how Vitalik views one of Ethereum’s longest-standing weaknesses: the extreme volatility of gas fees.

I. Gas Fees: The Real Problem Is Not “High or Low,” but “Unpredictable”

On the surface, gas fees on Ethereum may seem like a cyclical issue: sometimes cheap, sometimes expensive, depending on network demand. But at a deeper level, what makes gas a truly dangerous risk is not how high it goes — it’s the fact that no one can accurately predict when it will spike, or how extreme that spike will be.

Throughout Ethereum’s history, this pattern has repeated many times. There are periods when gas is only a few gwei and transactions are almost negligible in cost. But all it takes is a new “wave” — a DeFi boom, an NFT frenzy, a memecoin congestion event, or a major airdrop — and gas fees can spike 20x, 30x, even 50x within just a few hours. This shift happens too fast, too sharply, and with almost no clear early warning for most users.

For small retail users, this is mostly an annoyance: if fees are too high, they simply wait. But for large-scale operators such as:

• dApps
• DeFi protocols
• On-chain games
• Enterprises deploying blockchain-based products

this becomes a life-or-death cost risk.

These systems cannot operate on a logic of “run when gas is cheap, stop when gas is expensive.” They need to:

• Plan operating budgets
• Calculate transaction costs
• Commit service pricing to users
• Maintain stable user experiences over time

But when gas behaves like “cheap in the morning – insanely expensive in the afternoon,” all of these calculations collapse at the foundation. A dApp might:

• Be profitable at 10 gwei
• But suddenly suffer heavy losses at 200–300 gwei

A game might:

• Run smoothly when fees are low
• But completely freeze the player base when fees spike

At this point, the issue is no longer “high gas means higher cost,” but rather:

The entire business model can collapse because input costs cannot be controlled.

In economics, this is an especially dangerous type of risk: price uncertainty risk, not absolute price level risk. A business can survive with high costs if those costs are:

• Stable
• Predictable
• And can be passed on to users through pricing

But it cannot survive with costs that change suddenly and unpredictably.

That is why Vitalik does not view the gas problem through a purely technical lens (“how to make it cheaper”), but through an economic lens:

How to turn an unpredictable variable into one that can be hedged.

From this perspective, gas fees resemble:

• Electricity prices in manufacturing
• Oil prices in transportation
• Interest rates in finance

When these inputs become too volatile, markets don’t just try to “lower the price” — they create tools to lock in prices in advance, hedge risk, and stabilize planning. That is exactly why futures markets exist in traditional finance — and it is also the core logic behind the idea of gas futures on Ethereum.

In other words, Vitalik is no longer looking at gas merely as a “transaction fee,” but as:

a core economic input of the entire Ethereum ecosystem.

And when a key economic input becomes too unpredictable, then no matter how powerful the system is, there will always be a structural weakness at its core.

II. What Are Gas Futures and How Would They Work?

In Vitalik’s vision, a gas futures market would not be a side product on the fringes, but a financial market layer built directly on Ethereum’s own infrastructure, operating entirely through smart contracts without intermediaries.

In principle, each futures contract would act as a “cost commitment” for the future. The contract would specify:

• A specific amount of gas
• A future usage time
• A locked-in gas price

When a contract is created, two parties face each other:

• One party wants to hedge against rising gas fees (the contract buyer)
• The other accepts that risk in exchange for potential profit (the contract seller)

Users, dApps, or businesses could buy contracts in order to:

• “Freeze” gas costs for future operations
• Know in advance exactly how much they will pay for a defined volume of transactions

Conversely, if they no longer need to use gas in the future, they could resell the contract to the market instead of being stuck with a rigid commitment. This makes futures contracts not only a hedging tool, but also a tradable asset, similar to oil, electricity, or interest rate futures in traditional finance.

At the predefined settlement time:

• If the contract holder needs gas, they can use exactly that amount at the locked price
• Smart contracts will automatically balance the difference between:
  • The actual network gas price
  • And the contract gas price

The key point is:

Gas futures do not make gas cheaper — they only make gas costs “predictable.”

This is an extremely important distinction in essence. Ethereum is not promising:

• Cheap fees
• Or permanently low fees

But rather:

Fees that can be financially managed.

Risk Allocation Mechanism: Who Bears the Risk, Who Benefits?

In the gas futures model, price volatility risk is transferred from network users to the market itself. The market plays the role of:

• Absorbing risk
• Distributing risk among multiple participants
• Pricing risk based on supply and demand

At contract maturity:

• If the actual gas price is higher than the locked price → The contract buyer benefits, because they pay less than the market price.
• If the actual gas price is lower than the locked price → The contract seller benefits, because they sold gas at a price higher than the market.

This is the pure essence of a derivatives market: It does not create value out of thin air, but rather:

Redistributes profits and losses based on expectations about the future.

From this perspective, gas futures transform Ethereum’s transaction fees from a random risk into a financial variable that can be traded, hedged, and speculated upon.

From “Technical Fee” to “Financial Asset”

At present, gas is still viewed as:

• A mandatory technical cost
• A fee required for the network to operate

But once gas futures exist, gas will begin to have:

• A forward price
• A term structure (futures curve)
• Liquidity
• Market expectations

In other words, gas will be:

Financialized as a special type of blockchain commodity.

This is a major conceptual shift. It places Ethereum’s transaction fees alongside:

• Electricity prices in manufacturing
• Oil prices in transportation
• Interest rates in banking

All of these variables followed the same path:

• Initially a technical cost
• Then a financial risk
• And finally the subject of derivatives markets for hedging

Vitalik is, in essence, proposing that Ethereum follow this same path.

Impact on User and dApp Behavior

Once gas futures exist, the behavior of ecosystem participants would change:

• Large dApps could:
  • Lock in gas costs for 6–12 months
  • Stabilize their operating cost structure
• Blockchain businesses could:
  • Sign service contracts with more stable pricing
  • Avoid the risk of “gas spikes forcing system shutdowns mid-operation”
• Investors and traders gain:
  • A new asset class to trade
  • A way to bet on:
    • The strength or weakness of Ethereum’s network usage in the future

On the other side, gas would also become a market expectation indicator:

• High gas futures → the market expects heavy network usage
• Low gas futures → expectations of weak demand

Thus, gas would no longer be just a cost, but would also become an economic signal of the ecosystem’s health.

III. Why Does Vitalik Believe a Gas Futures Market Is Necessary?

Vitalik emphasizes a very down-to-earth yet economically critical reality: the fact that gas is cheap today says nothing about Ethereum’s future. By nature, gas fees are tightly linked to network usage — and usage fluctuates with technology cycles, speculative cycles, and sudden “unexpected waves” that are extremely hard to predict.

If, within the next 1–2 years, Ethereum enters another major growth cycle driven by:

• A new generation of DeFi,
• Large-scale on-chain games,
• The convergence of AI and blockchain,
• SocialFi,
• Or even just a sufficiently powerful memecoin trend,

then demand for blockspace could surge abruptly, pushing gas back into the kind of explosive spikes seen in the past. When that happens, all platforms, dApps, and businesses built on Ethereum would once again fall into a situation where:

• Costs become uncontrollable,
• Business models are distorted,
• User experience is severely disrupted.

Vitalik views this issue not through a purely technical optimization lens, but through the lens of the economic stability of the entire ecosystem. Gas futures, in essence, are a tool to:

• Anticipate risk in advance (the market expresses expectations about future gas),
• Price network usage pressure ahead of time (high or low gas futures act as an economic indicator),
• And most importantly: allow participants to proactively hedge cost risks, instead of remaining completely passive.

Instead of having to:

“Pray that gas won’t increase,”

dApps, businesses, and users can:

Proactively lock in costs and turn uncertainty into a calculable number.

This represents a shift from the mindset of:

“Leaving everything to the market” to the mindset of:

“Managing risk using financial tools.”

In Vitalik’s long-term vision, this does not merely make Ethereum “easier to use,” but helps transform Ethereum into an infrastructure on which stable, long-term business can be built — something that any mature blockchain platform must ultimately achieve.

IV. Who Benefits the Most from a Gas Futures Market?

If gas futures become a reality, the benefits will not be distributed evenly. The following groups would be the most direct beneficiaries.

1. dApps and On-Chain Platforms

For dApps, gas is not a small incidental fee — it is a direct input cost. With gas futures, they can:

• Lock in operating costs for months or even years,
• Build clear financial plans,
• Avoid having their entire business model disrupted by a sudden gas shock.

More importantly, dApps would be able to:

• Build stable fee models for users,
• Avoid the situation where usage is cheap today but prohibitively expensive tomorrow — something that often destroys the trust of mainstream users.

2. Frequent Ethereum Users

For individual users who transact often:

• Traders,
• DeFi users,
• NFT collectors,
• On-chain gamers,

gas futures would allow them to:

• Lock in transaction costs for a defined period,
• Escape the constant mindset of “waiting for cheap gas before acting,” which often disrupts personal financial activity.

This is especially important for people who:

• Trade based on strategy,
• Need to execute transactions at precise moments,
• But get thrown “out of sync” by sudden gas spikes.

3. Businesses Deploying Services on Ethereum

For businesses, gas volatility is one of the biggest barriers to launching blockchain products for the mass market. Gas futures would allow them to:

• Build detailed operating budgets,
• Sign long-term service contracts with partners,
• Deploy systems without the fear of being “cut off mid-operation” due to sudden fee increases.

In other words, gas futures help:

Transform Ethereum from a “high-risk, high-return” infrastructure into one that can support serious, long-term business operations.

4. The DeFi Ecosystem

For DeFi, gas futures open the door to:

• A new derivatives product,
• A new liquidity market,
• A completely new layer of risk management tools.

Beyond serving as a hedge for dApps and users, gas futures could also become:

• A trading instrument,
• A yield-generating instrument,
• A tool for expressing market expectations about Ethereum’s future health.

V. The Bigger Meaning: Ethereum Is Shifting from “Technical Infrastructure” to “Financialized Infrastructure”

If gas futures are eventually implemented, their significance will go far beyond the issue of transaction fees. At that point, Ethereum would move into an entirely new stage of development:

Ethereum would no longer be just a blockchain — it would become a financial market for its own operating infrastructure.

In the history of blockchain, we have already seen:

• Hashrate being “financialized” through mining,
• Staking becoming an asset market with yields, derivatives, and restaking,
• And in the future, following Vitalik’s logic: Gas itself could become a financial asset — with futures contracts, hedging mechanisms, and market-based pricing expectations.

At that point, transaction fees would no longer be merely:

• A technical fee that must be paid,

but instead:

• A financial variable with:
  • A spot price,
  • A future price,
  • Liquidity,
  • And market expectations.

This would represent a far more advanced stage than the period when Ethereum was simply a place to “run smart contracts.” It would mark the financialization of blockchain infrastructure itself, similar to how:

• Electricity,
• Oil,
• Interest rates were once financialized in the traditional economy.

From an even longer-term perspective, when every component of Ethereum — from staking, MEV, blockspace, to gas — can be priced, hedged, and traded, Ethereum would no longer be just a technology platform, but would truly become a fully developed on-chain economy.

Disclaimer:The information provided here is for informational purposes only and should not be considered financial, investment, legal, or professional advice. Always conduct your own research, consider your financial situation, and, if necessary, consult with a licensed professional before making any decisions.