Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has proposed the creation of a trustless on-chain futures market for gas, sparking discussions about the future of network fees. This idea was shared in a post on X, in response to questions about Ethereum's ability to guarantee low and predictable gas fees as adoption increases. Buterin argued that while ongoing roadmap improvements are designed to reduce costs, users, developers, and institutions require greater certainty regarding their future transaction expenses.
Buterin's proposed solution draws parallels to traditional futures markets. In the context of commodities like oil, futures contracts enable buyers and sellers to fix prices for a future date, thereby mitigating uncertainty and aiding in risk management. An Ethereum gas futures market would operate on the same principle.
This system would allow users to secure a predetermined base fee for a specified future time window, effectively locking in the cost of blockspace before it is needed. Such a mechanism could empower high-volume users, including traders, application developers, and institutions, to hedge against volatility and plan their operational expenses with greater accuracy.
Buterin elaborated that the benefits of such a market extend beyond mitigating price spikes. It would also furnish the ecosystem with a dependable metric for understanding expectations surrounding future gas costs. This increased transparency could foster improved long-term planning for various aspects, from protocol development to application design. In his assessment, a well-functioning on-chain futures system would serve as a foundational financial tool for Ethereum's evolving economy.
The proposal comes at a time when Ethereum gas fees have significantly decreased throughout 2025. Basic transactions are currently averaging approximately 0.474 gwei, or roughly one cent, according to Etherscan data. More complex operations, such as token swaps, NFT sales, or asset bridging, incur costs ranging from $0.05 to $0.27. Despite this general downward trend, fee levels have remained unstable.
YTD ETH gas prices (Source: Ycharts)
Data from Ycharts indicates that average transaction fees began the year at $1, fell to a low of $0.18, and at times surged to $2.60 before settling near $0.30. For Buterin, this volatility underscores the potential necessity of a futures market as essential infrastructure for Ethereum.