Ethereum blockspace trading platform ETHGas has announced a $12 million seed round led by Polychain Capital.
The funding news follows recent comments from Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, who floated the idea of an onchain “gas futures” market. Buterin suggested such a system could provide users with clearer expectations around transaction fees and allow them to hedge against future costs.
ETHGas says Ethereum requires a “reimagining of how blockspace is allocated across the network,” positioning its newly launched blockspace trading platform as a move toward that goal. According to the company, the market debuted with $800 million in commitments from validators, builders, and other ecosystem participants.

“Real-Time Ethereum”
Beyond turning blockspace into a tradable commodity, ETHGas is working to make Ethereum dramatically faster through an initiative it calls “Real-Time Ethereum.” The platform introduces purchasable blockspace commitments, or “pre-confirmations,” which let participants “secure execution at defined points in time.”
ETHGas founder Kevin Lepsoe explained that this system operates upstream of existing block production services, which are often exploited by maximum extractable value (MEV) bots. To achieve sub-block guaranteed transaction times, Realtime Ethereum divides each block into “240 segments of 50ms each.”
“The result is almost zero MEV and an Ethereum that feels super fast with effectively 50ms block times. […] We can actually go faster, but these thresholds are generally 99.9% supported.“
Lepsoe acknowledged that the system carries “some centralizing vectors.” ETHGas could, in theory, boost Ethereum validator rewards by up to eight to ten times if the entire network adopted real-time functionality and automated market makers paid for blockspace, creating incentives for centralization.
He framed this as an extension of an existing trend, noting, “Blockbuilders and relays like Titan and Ultrasound already handle roughly 50% of Ethereum’s blocks, so centralization concerns are already present.”

Lepsoe explained that “to the extent that we are successful,” ETHGas plans to operate multiple nodes with a leader-election process to reduce centralization risks. However, he acknowledged that implementing this approach would require significant effort and engagement from the community.
New Ways to Send Transactions
ETHGas claims its platform can handle over 10,000 transactions per second with user-defined block placement. Pre-confirmations can apply to entire blocks, allowing users to fill a block as they choose, reserve the top of a block, or guarantee inclusion in a block. However, capacity remains limited until additional validators join the network.
The most advanced form of pre-confirmation, execution guarantees, ensures not only inclusion but also a specific price or position within a block. Lepsoe gave an example: “For example, I want to run this bundle or series of trades and ensure that the result is X.”
Execution guarantees have already been tested on Ethereum mainnet, though broad deployment is planned for January or February 2026. Validators back pre-confirmations and can post collateral in Ether or restaked Ether via EigenLayer. If agreements are not honored, validators can be slashed proportionally, with collateral transferred to the buyer.
Lepsoe said validators have honored 99.96% of pre-confirmations to date, though Cointelegraph could not independently verify this figure. “You’d need to trust that ETHGas can intermediate and evaluate slashing accordingly,” he noted. “So far, this hasn’t been an issue.”

