Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has advocated for the creation of a decentralized gas futures market. He believes such a tool would allow for hedging against potential fee increases.
We need a good trustless onchain gas futures market.
(Like, a prediction market on the BASEFEE)
I’ve heard people ask: “today fees are low, but what about in 2 years? You say they’ll stay low because of increasing gaslimit from BAL + ePBS + later ZK-EVM, but do I believe you?”…
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) December 6, 2025
Buterin highlighted the community’s skepticism regarding future transaction costs. Despite planned technical upgrades aimed at maintaining low fees, users are seeking additional assurances.
According to the developer, a prediction market would address these issues by:
- providing a clear signal of market participants’ expectations regarding gas prices;
- allowing risk hedging through the actual prepayment of fees.
Tezos co-founder Arthur Breitman joined the discussion, reminding that users regret abandoning old mechanisms like Gas Tokens in vain—these solutions created network security vulnerabilities.
Same with the max tx gas cap. Same with every gas cost increase. Same with the selfdestruct nerf.
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) December 7, 2025
Buterin supported his colleague, drawing parallels with other unpopular yet significant protocol changes. He cited examples such as the introduction of a gas limit on transactions and the restriction of the SELFDESTRUCT function.
Earlier, on December 4, Ethereum developers deployed the Fusaka update on the mainnet. Shortly thereafter, a failure in the popular consensus client Prysm occurred, disabling part of the network’s validators.