$ETH Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has proposed a trustless onchain gas futures market to help users hedge against future transaction fees.

Industry voices, including Flashbots strategy steward Hasu and Gnosis co-founder Martin Koppelmann, shared skepticism about the idea.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has proposed creating a trustless onchain gas futures market to give users and developers a way to hedge against future transaction costs.

In an X post, Buterin said users often ask whether today’s relatively low fees will persist over the next two years, even with ongoing scaling work across the Ethereum roadmap.

On Ethereum, “gas” is the fee users pay to make the network do something — like sending a transaction or using a smart contract. Every action on Ethereum requires a small amount of computational work, and gas measures how much of that work is needed. When the network is busy, gas costs rise and vice versa.

For years, Ethereum was known for wide swings in gas fees, with costs spiking sharply during periods of heavy activity, especially during NFT booms, DeFi growth cycles, and popular token launches. Because fees rose and fell with demand, users often had little visibility into what transactions might cost from one week to the next.