The runaway success of Base, the Coinbase-owned Ethereum overlay blockchain designed for faster, cheaper transactions, led to the creation of a market tied to the fluctuating cost of the total gas needed to power the network, allowing speculators to betting on recurring peaks in public services. on layer 2 system.
Taking inspiration from the way traders speculate and hedge in traditional energy markets, Alkimiya, a startup backed by Coinbase Ventures as well as companies like Dragonfly and Castle Island Ventures, allows users to go long or short the cost of transactions included in blocks. , or “blockspace” – a representation of the storage and computing capacity of a blockchain.
“Paying for a blockspace is like paying for other energy sources, like cars paying for gasoline or planes paying for jet fuel,” said Leo Zhang, founder of Alkimiya, in a interview. “Traditional energy markets have grown, allowing airlines to hedge against the price of jet fuel, for example, and we believe there should be a better pricing mechanism to determine how people evaluate and use this basic energy resource, block space. »
Launched in August 2023, Base has outperformed its Layer 2 competitors, generating over $14 million last month. The increased activity on Base means that the cumulative gas paid to the network can fluctuate widely, ranging from a low of 10 ETH to a high of 200 ETH in a single day.
Unlike many other blockchains, Base does not have a token and has no plans to issue one. Alkimiya smart contracts allow users to bet on how the cost of base blockspace might fluctuate through the introduction of AI agents, for example, or on-chain events like the arrival of a memecoin, an NFT or a particular airdrop.
Under the hood, Alkimiya uses a very common decentralized finance (DeFi) architecture in which an oracle tracks gas consumed by base users, and a smart contract system facilitates accounting and logic, Zhang explained.
“A user can buy this contract which itself tracks the total amount of gas paid to the base,” Zhang said. “And the reason this is feasible is because it’s completely transparent. There is no centralized exchange where everything is in a black box. »
