ETHGas

When I first met Kevin Lepsoe, the founder of ETHGas, I was genuinely excited by his vision of turning Ethereum blockspace into a predictable, tradable asset. The project has already raised $12 million from Polychain Capital. More recently, in April, ether.fi committed $3 billion in ETH to EthGas’s High Performance Staking Service for three years — representing roughly 40% of ether.fi’s holdings at the time — along with exclusive use of their preconfirmation infrastructure. What makes EthGas stand out is how they’re rethinking block production. Instead of a single 12-second block auction, they break blockspace into hundreds of 50-millisecond micro-intervals. According to Delphi Digital this approach could reduce harmful MEV (primarily sandwiching and frontrunning) by around 91%, while still allowing beneficial arbitrage and liquidations to function. Unlike most MEV solutions that focus on hiding or redistributing extraction, EthGas is building a forward market for blockspace, giving applications and traders the ability to secure execution in advance.

Ethereum Blockspace as a structured, liquid, tradable asset class. ETHGas is building the realtime infrastructure for Ethereum’s economy. Kevin Lepsoe, Founder of ETHGas, will take the stage at Vault Summit NYC. June 5, New York · http://nyc.vaultsummit.xyz

ETHGas and ether.fi Announce $3Bn Partnership to Build Institutional Blockspace Markets on Ethereum Every major commodity market in history has evolved from spot to forward pricing. Oil, power, interest rates — all followed the same trajectory. Ethereum blockspace is next. Today, Ethereum allocates blockspace through a time-delayed spot auction. Every block is contested at the last second, with no mechanism for forward pricing, pre-purchase, or execution guarantees. For validators, this means unpredictable revenue. For institutions, it means no ability to manage risk. And for applications, it means no certainty of execution. ETHGas is building the infrastructure to change that with an exchange layer where validators can pre-sell future block inclusion rights and buyers can purchase guaranteed execution in advance. This introduces a forward curve for Ethereum's most fundamental resource. A forward market only functions with deep, committed supply behind it. ether.fi, with over 2.8M staked ETH under management, brings exactly that. Their $3Bn commitment to ETHGas' High Performance Staking Service establishes the supply-side foundation this market requires. The three-year exclusive agreement reflects the scale of the infrastructure being built. As over $25Bn in ETH now sits across institutional vehicles and tokenized assets move onchain at scale, the need for predictable, reliable execution becomes a critical infrastructure requirement. This partnership marks the beginning of that buildout. Read more: https://lnkd.in/gMTugdd9

Speaker Spotlight — ETHCapital Seoul Kevin Lepsoe, Founder, ETHGas A leader at the intersection of finance and technology, Kevin is building the infrastructure for a Realtime Ethereum and driving institutional adoption at scale. Through ETHGas, he is transforming blockspace into a structured, tradable asset, unlocking new efficiency for the ecosystem. Kevin will deliver the opening keynote and join the fireside chat on “The World Computer called Ethereum”. Catch him in Seoul: https://lnkd.in/gW5ZFRzn

Announcing ETHConf 2026 Speaker: Kevin Lepsoe, Founder at ETHGas Kevin previously worked in financial engineering at Morgan Stanley before founding ETHGas, a project focused on building derivatives markets around Ethereum blockspace and gas pricing. He’s joining ETHConf to explore how financial markets around blockspace could evolve as Ethereum adoption grows. ETHConf brings together the teams building Ethereum’s financial rails and the institutions beginning to use them. 8,000+ attendees, 150+ speakers, 100+ companies. June 8–10, Javits Center, NYC. Get tickets: https://lnkd.in/gBTZnKGp

Our founder Kevin Lepsoe took the stage at ETHDenver last week to lay out what we see as Ethereum's two final unlocks: MEV and speed. A single 12-second block costs about $100 to acquire, yet it represents influence over $650B in on-chain assets. That gap is where ~$300M a year gets extracted from everyday users through front-running and sandwich attacks. Blockspace is Ethereum's biggest product and right now it's wildly underpriced. The answer isn't just a better MEV fix. It's giving blockspace the market structure it deserves with the same price discovery and risk management that commodities like oil and electricity have had for decades. That's what we've already built. But the bigger unlock is Realtime Ethereum. By splitting a 12-second block into sequential 100ms mini-blocks, ~94% of MEV disappears, LPs for protocols like Uniswap could earn 2.7x more (around $3.5B in additional annual fees for that protocol alone), and users get a genuinely instant transaction experience. Latency drops from 12 seconds to 100 milliseconds — 100x faster. Pair that with zkEVMs scaling block capacity 10x in 2026, and we're closing the blockchain trilemma on all three sides. This is Realtime Ethereum. Full video: https://lnkd.in/eGEVD5sg

Ethereum’s execution model was never designed for real-time use. Transactions are submitted into a public mempool, ordered via an auction, and resolve only when a block lands. The system is resilient and globally verifiable, but outcomes are probabilistic. You do not know when a transaction will land, where it will land, or at what price it will execute until after the fact. For many applications, that uncertainty has become a larger constraint than throughput itself. As Ethereum matures, the question is no longer just how much the network can process, but how predictable execution can be. Our solution is Realtime Ethereum - an approach that makes Ethereum 100x faster. Realtime Ethereum introduces a different approach to execution without altering Ethereum’s core consensus. By slicing blocks into sub-blocks, execution can be resolved in milliseconds rather than seconds, with explicit inclusion guarantees defined ahead of time. This changes how blockspace behaves. Transactions can be pre-committed to specific execution windows. Outcomes can be known before submission rather than inferred after the fact. Latency becomes a measurable input instead of an incidental side effect. For builders, this enables applications that depend on tight feedback loops — trading, payments, coordination, and other latency-sensitive use cases — while remaining on Ethereum L1. For traders and execution-aware users, it reduces the hidden costs of slippage, retries, and adverse ordering that emerge in slow, uncertain environments. At a systems level, Realtime Ethereum reframes blockspace itself: not as a best-effort byproduct of consensus, but as a resource with defined execution properties. Unlock the era of Realtime Ethereum with ETHGas.

ETHGas is proud to announce that we’ve raised a $𝟭𝟮𝗠 𝘀𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱, led by Polychain Capital, to accelerate the development of Realtime Ethereum and Ethereum’s first blockspace futures markets — a new financial primitive for the world’s most important settlement layer. Alongside this raise, we’re also announcing $𝟴𝟬𝟬𝗠 𝗶𝗻 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗶𝘁𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 from leading validators, builders, and wholesale network participants to support ETHGas’ marketplace and product development. Over the past decade, Ethereum has evolved into the most decentralized and economically significant base layer in crypto. Its blockspace has become one of the highest-grade digital assets in existence — scarcer and more economically meaningful than the aggregate value of assets secured by the network. The next phase of Ethereum’s evolution demands a smarter, more programmable market for how that blockspace is allocated. This funding enables ETHGas to bring that future forward. A portion of this round will also expand the 𝗢𝗽𝗲𝗻 𝗚𝗮𝘀 𝗜𝗻𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 (𝗢𝗚𝗜), our industry-wide effort to eliminate gas fees at the UX layer. Our early cohort includes EigenCloud, ether.fi, Pendle, and Velvet.Capital, with additional partners on the way. Our mission is clear: 𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗼𝗻 𝗘𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲𝘂𝗺 𝗶𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝘁, 𝗽𝗿𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗰𝘁𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗴𝗮𝘀𝗹𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘂𝘀𝗲𝗿 𝗹𝗮𝘆𝗲𝗿. As our founder, Kevin Lepsoe, puts it: “𝘌𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘶𝘮 𝘣𝘭𝘰𝘤𝘬𝘴𝘱𝘢𝘤𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘥𝘪𝘨𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘭 𝘰𝘪𝘭: 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥’𝘴 𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘷𝘢𝘭𝘶𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘰𝘥𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝘺𝘰𝘶’𝘷𝘦 𝘯𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘣𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘥𝘦. 𝘜𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘭 𝘯𝘰𝘸.” Read more in our full announcement: https://lnkd.in/g39BUYNe

Today, we’re introducing the 𝗢𝗽𝗲𝗻 𝗚𝗮𝘀 𝗜𝗻𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 — an industry-wide framework that allows protocols to subsidize user gas fees, zero-code, turning what was once friction into a growth engine. The program launches on Ethereum mainnet, expanding soon to BNB, Base, and Arbitrum. Through Open Gas, protocols can attract new users with reduced gas friction, encourage high-value activity, and create a consistent retention loop. Users enjoy seamless, gasless experiences that make onchain interaction truly instant. Here's our roadmap to an instant, gasless economy to onboard the next billion onchain users: 𝗣𝗵𝗮𝘀𝗲 𝟭: 𝗖𝘂𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 & 𝗥𝗲𝗯𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀 We're launching with consolidated monthly gas rebates. Protocols can immediately reward high-value user actions (like staking or deposits) across the ecosystem. 𝗣𝗵𝗮𝘀𝗲 𝟮: 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗺𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗰 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗼𝗹 Next, we'll empower protocols with self-service tools to create custom, "if-this-then-that" incentives for specific onchain behaviors, from swaps to quests. 𝗣𝗵𝗮𝘀𝗲 𝟯: 𝗙𝘂𝗹𝗹 𝗔𝘂𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 The final step: truly seamless gas abstraction. Leveraging the latest Ethereum innovations, gas fees will become invisible at the point of transaction. Out of sight, out of mind. We’re proud to launch with our 𝗗𝗮𝘆 𝟭 𝗽𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗽𝗮𝗻𝘁𝘀: EigenCloud, ether.fi, Pendle and Velvet.Capital, alongside infrastructure allies GasHawk, Blocknative, Goldsky, and ClickHouse as we build the foundation for a gasless ecosystem. This is how Ethereum becomes instant, where gas abstraction isn’t a feature, but the standard.