The overwhelming success of Base, Coinbase’s Ethereum overlay blockchain designed for faster, cheaper transactions, has led to the creation of a market tied to the fluctuating cost of the total gas needed to power the network provided, allowing speculators to bet on recurring energy peaks. on the layer 2 system.
Based on the way traders speculate and hedge in traditional energy markets, Alkimiya, a startup backed by Coinbase Ventures and companies like Dragonfly and Castle Island Ventures, allows users to go long or short on the cost of trades recorded in blocks . , or “blockspace” – a representation of the storage and computing capacity of a blockchain.
“Paying for blockspace is the same as paying for other energy sources, such as cars paying for gasoline or airplanes paying for jet fuel,” Alkimiya founder Leo Zhang said in an interview. “Traditional energy markets have developed that allow airlines, for example, to hedge against the price of their jet fuel, and we think there should be a better price discovery mechanism for how people price and use this nuclear energy source, namely blockspace. ”
Base launched in August 2023 and outperformed its Tier 2 rivals, generating more than $14 million last month. The increased activity on Base means that the cumulative gas paid to the network can fluctuate dramatically, from as little as 10 ETH to as much as 200 ETH in a single day.
Unlike many other blockchains, Base does not have a token and has no plans to issue one. Alkimiya’s smart contracts allow users to bet on how the cost of Base blockspace may fluctuate thanks to, for example, the introduction of AI agents or on-chain events such as the arrival of a certain memecoin, NFT or airdrop.
Under the hood, Alkimiya uses a common decentralized finance (DeFi) architecture where an oracle tracks the gas consumed by users on Base, and a system of smart contracts facilitates the accounting and logic, Zhang explained.
“A user can purchase this contract that tracks the total amount of gas paid to the base,” Zhang said. “And the reason this is feasible is because it is completely transparent. There is no centralized exchange where everything is in a black box.”