Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin proposed a system that could guarantee the cost of using the network in advance.
Although Ethereum mainnet fees are at historically low levels, the proposal futures market On-chain without intermediaries.
This system allows users to To set trading fees for a specific time period Reduce uncertainty in the face of potential fluctuations in network costs.
Buterin’s proposal points to a recurring problem with Ethereum: the volatility of fees.
As activity increases, the cost of listing transactions can quickly rise. For example, as reported by CriptoNoticias, on December 7th, these fees Increased over 800% in one day.
Today, this variation is called “Basic price” (base rate that automatically adjusts based on congestion, introduced in the EIP-1559 update) and the available gas limit per block. Increased by default with Fusaka update.
Ethereum’s co-founders are proposing to introduce the mechanism into an open market functioning within the network. There, each user can purchase a certain amount of gas to be used at a certain time interval in the future.
How it works “Price Guarantee” becomes possibleequivalent to how futures contracts work in traditional markets, but applied to Ethereum fees.
What did Buterin say? Why did he think this market was needed?
On December 6, Buterin explained his position in a publication on X, where he said:
We need a good gas futures market that works on-chain without trusting third parties. I’ve heard questions like, “Fees are low now, but what will they be in two years?”
Vitalik Buterin, founder of Ethereum.
According to Buterin, Some in the community are concerned that the ecosystem promises low fees Although based on future technological improvements, there is no clear way to predict whether those changes will actually lead to economical use of the network.
In that sense, Mr. Vitalik developed as follows.
Some say fees will remain low thanks to increased per-block gas limits, proposer-builder separation (PBS), and subsequent advances in zero-knowledge virtual machines (ZK-EVM). But why should they believe them?
Vitalik Buterin, founder of Ethereum.
To put into context the technology and advances included in Buterin’s statement, let’s take a look below.
- Increasing gas per block allows more operations to be processed in each time slot. Reduce pressure on fees.
- PBS (Separation of proposer and constructor): This design aims to separate the person who assembles the blocks from the person who proposes the block. Improve efficiency and reduce fraud.
- ZK-EVM (Zero Knowledge Virtual Machine) – Aims to perform transactions faster and more compactly using cryptographic proofs. Operational costs on Ethereum are reduced.
However, there remains uncertainty as to whether these advances will be sufficient to maintain stable interest rates as activity increases.
Buterin’s point is that despite these improvements, there are no tools to show whether the market truly believes these changes will keep costs down in the future. And his suggestion is:
An on-chain gas futures market solves this. People can clearly see what future fees are expected to be and can also avoid price increases by pre-paying for a certain amount of gasoline for a certain period of time.
Vitalik Buterin, founder of Ethereum.
In this way, Buterin’s proposal can reduce uncertainty for application developers and managers of normal operations, while also preventing sudden increases in activity from impacting users who need predictability.
(Tag Translation) Blockchain
