Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has floated the concept of an on-chain gas futures market that would give users certainty over transaction fees because the network becomes more widespread.
In a post on
Buterin explained that one method to address the uncertainty can be to offer users the flexibility to essentially lock in prices for specific times in the longer term, and outlined a possible marketplace for Ethereum base fees – a vital driver of overall gas fees.
How an Ethereum gas futures market would work
A conventional futures market offers contracts to purchase or sell assets like oil at a set price in the longer term, allowing investors to invest on price changes and producers to hedge against future risks.
In the Ethereum context, the futures market would essentially do the identical thing, offering gas fees at fixed prices in future time frames, allowing users of the network to potentially save on future price spikes in the event that they occur.
Source: Vitalik Buterin
Therefore, a well-established and reliable futures market would offer a very important metric for the ecosystem to invest, plan or construct on.
“An on-chain gas futures market would help solve this problem: people would receive a transparent signal about people’s expectations of future gas fees and will even hedge against future gas prices by effectively prepaying for any given amount of gas in a given time interval,” he said.
A functioning prediction market equivalent to this is able to provide a necessary service to large network users equivalent to traders, builders, applications and institutions that require a level of certainty in forecasting operational costs.
Ethereum gas fees have declined throughout 2025
Buterin's idea comes at a time when Ethereum's average gas fees for base transactions are around 0.474 Gwei, or $0.01, in line with data from Etherscan on the time of writing.
However, for more complex transactions equivalent to token swaps, NFT sales, and bridging assets, the common cost is around $0.16, $0.27, and $0.05.
While Ethereum transaction fees continued to say no in 2025, there have been quite a few spikes and crashes in the common cost of all transaction types. Data from Ycharts shows that the common fee was $1 at the beginning of the 12 months and has since fallen to $0.30, rising as high as $2.60 and falling as little as $0.18.
