ETHGas, an Ethereum blockspace trading platform, raised $12 million in a seed round led by Polychain Capital. Inspired in part by Vitalik Buterin’s idea of an onchain “gas futures” market, ETHGas aims to make blockspace a tradable commodity, letting users hedge future fees and allocate blockspace more efficiently. At launch, the platform had $800 million in commitments from network validators, builders, and other participants. ETHGas seeks to speed up Ethereum via its “Real-Time Ethereum” initiative, offering purchasable blockspace “pre-confirmations” with defined execution times. The system divides each block into 240 slots of 50ms, enabling much faster transaction times and reducing maximum extractable value (MEV). The company claims this model could increase validator rewards up to eight to ten times but admits it introduces some centralization risks which ETHGas plans to address with a multi-node system and leader election. ETHGas’s platform can process over 10,000 transactions per second and offers users block placement guarantees. Pre-confirmations can secure an entire block, top-of-block execution, or specific transaction results for a set price. Validators provide collateral to guarantee execution, facing slashing if agreements are not fulfilled. Validators have reportedly honored 99.96% of preconfirmations so far.

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