ETHGas is a Realtime Ethereum Infrastructure protocol designed to speed up Ethereum transactions by more than 100x. It achieves this by commoditizing blockspace, which facilitates an instant, gasless experience for users and boosts validator yields.
A team mainly located in Hong Kong launched ETHGas on the Ethereum mainnet in 2025. The protocol establishes a market for blockspace, permitting the trading of Ethereum gas and block inclusion rights in advance, rather than relying solely on spot auctions during block production.
While Ethereum’s base layer currently functions with block times of around 12 seconds and sells blockspace on demand, ETHGas enhances this system. It breaks blocks down into smaller components, allowing validators to offer future blockspace via forward and futures-style markets. This enables entities like validators, block builders, and searchers to trade these units beforehand, resulting in more predictable execution and reduced latency for confirmations.
The protocol also enables pre-confirmations, providing execution guarantees for transactions prior to their final inclusion in a block. This method shortens effective settlement times for applications needing quicker feedback than standard block intervals allow. ETHGas serves as infrastructure that works with current Ethereum validator software without replacing Ethereum consensus.
Furthermore, ETHGas facilitates gas abstraction via its Open Gas Initiative. This allows protocols and applications to cover gas fees for users, so end users can engage with Ethereum without handling variable gas costs directly. Settlement happens in the background, with gas costs managed at the application or protocol level.
By late 2025, ETHGas directs a low single-digit percentage of Ethereum blockspace through its system, involving various infrastructure providers and validator operators.