Vitalik Buterin proposes launching an on-chain gas futures market to improve Ethereum fee predictability

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has proposed building a trustless on-chain gas futures market to address Ethereum’s longstanding issue of fee volatility. In a recent article posted on X, he stated that users and developers frequently ask whether Ethereum’s future fees will be controllable, so he has put forward this mechanism aimed at improving cost predictability by allowing gas prices to be locked in advance.

Buterin pointed out that the on-chain gas futures would operate similarly to traditional commodity futures markets, allowing users to purchase gas at a fixed price for a specified future time period, thus hedging against the risk of fee spikes. He noted that users could “prepay” for gas to be used in the future, making it easier for them to plan costs when executing large numbers of transactions or operating dApps, especially before periods of high network demand.

This system would create a market-generated signal for future base fees, helping traders, developers, and institutional users increase operational confidence. He emphasized, “People will be able to clearly understand the expected future gas fees and hedge against potential volatility.”

Despite Ethereum’s recent decline in transaction costs, volatility remains significant. Etherscan shows that the current gas fee for basic transfers is about 0.474 gwei, roughly 1 cent; however, token swaps or NFT operations still require higher costs. Additionally, according to YCharts, Ethereum’s average fee in 2025 once approached $1, with the annual volatility range between $0.18 and $2.60. Buterin hopes the gas futures market will become a structural tool for managing this volatility.

Meanwhile, Ethereum’s exchange balance has dropped to a historic low, accounting for only 8.7% of circulating supply. Since July, this proportion has decreased by 43%, reflecting that ETH is rapidly flowing into staking, restaking protocols, L2s, DeFi collateral, and long-term self-custody wallets. Analysts believe this is causing ETH’s liquidity environment to become extremely tight and could trigger a future liquidity squeeze.

Research firm Milk Road stated that Ethereum is entering “the tightest supply cycle in history.” Bitcoin’s exchange balance ratio remains much higher than ETH’s, meaning the trend of de-exchange in Ethereum’s market structure is even more pronounced.