ETHGas raises $12M as Buterin spotlights onchain gas futures
ETHGas, an Ethereum blockspace trading platform, has raised $12 million in a seed round led by Polychain Capital. The funding follows Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin's recent discussion on the potential benefits of an onchain "gas futures" market for user fee predictability and cost hedging. ETHGas aims to reimagine network blockspace allocation and has secured $800 million in commitments from validators and builders at launch.
The platform also introduces "Real-Time Ethereum," a system that uses "pre-confirmations" to make Ethereum significantly faster by splitting blocks into 240 pieces for sub-block transaction times, aiming for nearly zero MEV and 50ms block times. Founder Kevin Lepsoe acknowledged potential centralization risks but proposed mitigation through a multi-node system. The platform claims capacity for over 10,000 TPS and offers various pre-confirmation types, including execution guarantees for specific transaction outcomes. Validators back these commitments with ETH or restaked ETH collateral, with slashing penalties for failures. Lepsoe reported a 99.96% honor rate for pre-confirmations, though this remains unverified.
cointelegraph12/18 12:00
