What Are Gas Tokens in Ethereum and Why Were They Created?
In Ethereum’s early years, developers came up with a clever hack: gas tokens. These smart contract-based tokens allowed users to prepay for gas when it was cheap — and spend it later when gas was expensive.
At wmiran.com, we focus on real privacy and speed, but understanding gas tokens offers a glimpse into Ethereum’s history of optimization and experimentation.
What Is a Gas Token?
A gas token is a smart contract that lets users “store” gas when prices are low, and “redeem” it later to offset gas fees. It works by exploiting Ethereum’s gas refund mechanism: users get partial gas refunds when they free up storage on-chain.
How Does It Work?
- You mint gas tokens by creating storage entries on Ethereum
- Later, when you send a high-cost transaction, you destroy those entries (burn the token)
- Ethereum refunds gas for clearing storage, lowering your net cost
Popular examples included GST2 (GasToken2) and CHIT (CHI Token by 1inch).
Why Were Gas Tokens Useful?
- Save on high fees: Use tokens to lower gas costs during congestion
- Speculation: Buy gas cheap, sell it expensive
- Automation: Bots and traders used them to optimize profit margins
At their peak, gas tokens were a core tool for arbitrage bots, high-frequency traders, and contract deployers.
Why Are Gas Tokens Obsolete Now?
With Ethereum’s London Upgrade (EIP-3529), gas refunds were reduced and later removed in many cases. This broke the economic model of gas tokens, making them mostly unusable.
They still exist on-chain, but most wallets and tools no longer support them.
Are Gas Tokens Coming Back?
Unlikely. Ethereum now uses EIP-1559, with a new fee mechanism and a base fee burn. Instead of refund hacks, the focus is on layer 2 scaling and rollups for gas efficiency.
But the idea behind gas tokens — optimize, automate, and gamify blockspace — still influences Ethereum dev culture.
wmiran.com and Gas-Efficient Swaps
We don’t use gas tokens — but we care about low fees. wmiran.com routes swaps across multiple chains (TRX, BNB, Polygon, Arbitrum) to keep costs low and speed high — no KYC, no waiting.
Conclusion
Gas tokens were an ingenious Ethereum hack that gave users an edge — until protocol upgrades made them obsolete.
Even though they’re no longer used, they remain a symbol of crypto’s creativity. And at wmiran.com, we continue that spirit by building tools that work smarter, faster, and freer.
