Vitalik Buterin Proposes On-Chain Gas Futures Market to Stabilize Ethereum Transaction Costs

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has unveiled a new proposal to create an on-chain gas futures market, aiming to address the network's long-standing issue of unpredictable transaction fees. The initiative would allow users, particularly high-volume entities, to lock in gas prices for future transactions, providing cost certainty and operational stability.

The proposal, detailed by Buterin in a social media post on December 6, 2025, suggests that futures contracts for gas would be traded directly on-chain. These contracts would reflect market expectations for future network demand, with prices rising when increased activity is anticipated and falling when demand is expected to be low. This would provide a clear economic signal about upcoming blockspace pressure.

The system is designed as an extension of Ethereum's existing EIP-1559 fee mechanism, not a replacement. It builds upon the base fee model introduced by EIP-1559, aiming to give users a clearer understanding of future costs and prevent sudden, disruptive spikes in transaction fees.

Buterin specifically highlighted the benefits for high-volume users such as cryptocurrency exchanges, wallet services, and layer-2 rollups. These entities often face operational and financial challenges due to gas price volatility. The ability to secure a fixed price for future gas usage would allow them to plan deployments, schedule transactions, and manage margins with greater predictability.

"We need a good trustless onchain gas futures market," Buterin stated, addressing concerns from users about long-term fee predictability despite upcoming scalability improvements like blob transactions (BAL), enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (ePBS), and ZK-EVM technology.

The proposal also aims to lower barriers for enterprise adoption by providing a stable and predictable cost structure for integrating Ethereum into business workflows. Furthermore, the futures market data would offer valuable signals to guide the network's scaling efforts and infrastructure investments.

It is important to note that the proposal's primary goal is fee stabilization, not reduction. The concept is currently in an early discussion phase; it has not yet been formally submitted as an Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP), and no implementation timeline has been established.