ETHGas lets institutions reserve Ethereum blockspace with built-in compliance screening

Ethereum has always run on a first-come, highest-bidder basis. You submit a transaction, attach a fee, and hope it lands in the next block. For a retail trader, that uncertainty is an annoyance. For a regulated bank, it is a dealbreaker.

ETHGas wants to change that. The company lets institutions reserve Ethereum blockspace ahead of time and screen transactions against their own compliance rules before those transactions ever reach the chain.

How reserved blockspace works

The technical version runs through two products: the Blockspace and Preconf Marketplace, and a dedicated Institutional Blockspace offering. Together, they promise guaranteed transaction inclusion through two mechanisms.

The first is whole-block commitments. An institution can effectively lock in an entire block for its own activity. The second is inclusion preconfirmations, which are promises that a specific transaction will make it into a block.

Speed is part of the pitch. ETHGas slices Ethereum’s 12-second blocks into smaller sub-blocks. That lets transactions receive validator-signed preconfirmations in about 50ms.

The compliance layer

Speed alone would not move a compliance department. The more interesting piece is what ETHGas calls its Policy Engine.

The engine applies sanctions screening and jurisdictional requirements at the point of block construction. Rather than checking a transaction after it settles, the filter runs while the block is being assembled.

That timing matters. For a regulated entity, discovering after the fact that a counterparty was sanctioned is a legal problem, not a technical one. Screening upstream is meant to keep that problem from appearing in the first place.

ETHGas positions the whole setup as a “trust layer” for institutions. Notably, it does this without altering Ethereum’s underlying protocol. The base chain stays the same, and the institutional controls sit on top.

The numbers so far

ETHGas, led by founder Kevin Lepsoe, launched between late 2024 and early 2025. The company has since secured over $800 million in commitments for blockspace reservations.

The biggest single deal came in April 2026. ETHGas announced a three-year, $3 billion commitment with ether.fi, aimed at boosting liquidity for institutional users.

On the funding side, ETHGas raised a $12 million seed round in December 2025. Polychain Capital led the round.

The company has also been working the conference circuit. It ran an institutional roadshow across major APAC cities in September and October 2026, including appearances at events like TOKEN2049. Institutional sessions in Tokyo, Seoul, and Singapore in October 2026 focused on the shift toward onchain treasury operations.

Background: why institutions have hesitated

Ethereum’s open fee market was designed for permissionless access, not predictable execution. That design is a feature for decentralization. It is a liability for a treasury desk that needs to settle at a known cost and a known time, with documented counterparty checks.

ETHGas is essentially trying to translate public blockchain mechanics into something a traditional finance operations team recognizes: booked capacity, guaranteed execution, and an audit trail of compliance checks.

What this means

For institutions, the main value is reduced execution risk and reduced compliance liability. For Ethereum more broadly, a growing market for reserved blockspace changes how demand for the chain shows up. Institutions booking capacity in advance is a very different signal than speculative traders bidding up gas during a market rush. It frames the network less as a trading venue and more as infrastructure that businesses plan around.

Compliance screening at the block-construction layer is a practical answer for regulated firms. How the wider Ethereum community views transaction filtering at that stage, even when it is opt-in and confined to reserved blockspace, is a conversation worth following.

Promising 50ms preconfirmations and guaranteed inclusion is one thing during a roadshow. Delivering them consistently during periods of heavy network demand is the version institutions will actually judge.