ETHGas Raises $12M for ETH ‘Gas Future’ and 50ms ‘Blocks’

Ethereum blockspace trading platform ETHGas has announced that it has raised $12 million in a seed round led by Polychain Capital.

The cash announcement comes after Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin recently discussed the idea of ​​an onchain “gas futures” market, saying such a product could give users a clearer signal of expected payments and prevent future costs.

ETHGas says Ethereum needs to “rethink the way blockspace is allocated on the network” and its newly launched blockspace trading platform is a step in that direction. The company launched the market with $800 million in pledges from realtors, builders and other participants.

Related: Ethereum gas limit may rise to 80M in January

“Real Time Ethereum”

In addition to making blockchain a tradable commodity, ETHGas also aims to make Ethereum exponentially faster — an initiative the company calls “real-time Ethereum.” The company says purchasable blockchain commitments called “pre-proofs” allow participants to “commit at certain points.”

According to ETHGas founder Kevin Lepso, this implementation is a step up from current block production services, which are routinely used by high extractable value (MEV) bots. Lepso explained that Realtime Ethereum splits the block into “240 blocks of 50ms each, 50ms each” to achieve sub-block guaranteed transaction times.

“The effect is almost zero MEV and Ethereum are very fast with effective 50ms block times. […] We can go really fast but these limits are generally 99.9% supported.

Still, Lepso admits that there are “some centripetal vectors” in the system. If all Ethereum is instantiated and automated market makers are paid in exchange for blockchain, ETHGas could increase Ethereum validator rewards by up to eight or 10 times, promoting centralization.

He pointed out that this is a continuation of the previous trend. “Blockmakers + relays like Titan and Ultrasound already run probably 50% of the blocks on Ethereum, so the centralization concerns are already there,” he said.

“As long as we're successful,” Lepso said, ETHGas will set up multiple nodes with a leader election process to address the risks of this centralization. Still, he admits, such an initiative requires more effort and community involvement.

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New ways to send transactions

ETHGas claims its system can handle more than 10,000 transactions per second, with a user-defined block space. According to Lepso, pre-confirmations can be for entire blocks, allowing users to choose whether to fill a full block, top-up reservation or guaranteed inclusion in a block. Capacity is still limited until more validators are on board.

The last type of pre-guarantees are execution guarantees, which are not only inclusive, but “guaranteed of a certain value or position in the block”.

“For example, I want to run this batch or series of transactions and verify that the result is X,” Lepso cites as an example.

Lepso said enforcement guarantees have already been tested on the mainnet but won't be widely deployed until January or February 2026.

He added that validators guarantee pre-verifications and can be re-stored as Ether (ETH) or Ether via EigenLayer. He said that if the agreement is not respected, the attackers will be able to reduce the amount of blockspace obtained and transfer the deposit to the buyer.

Lepso claims that validators have honored 99.96% of pre-verifications to date, but Cointelegraph has not been able to independently verify that claim.

“You need to believe that ETHGas is able to correctly evaluate the medium and the cutoff. This was not a problem at the moment,” Lepso said.

Related: Ethereum Triples Gas Limit ‘Floor, We Can Go Up' – Sassano