GasToken - tokenize gas?

[sam]

I thought this would be an interesting project to look at as they are also live on Ethereum & Ethereum Classic, and have multiple tokens. Also it has a very interesting use case!

• Name: GasToken
• Symbol: GST
• Website: https://gastoken.io/
• Github: https://github.com/projectchicago/gastoken
• Standard: ERC20

Ethereum:

• GST1: 0x88d60255F917e3eb94eaE199d827DAd837fac4cB
• GST2: 0x0000000000b3F879cb30FE243b4Dfee438691c04

Ethereum Classic:

• GST1: 0x88d60255F917e3eb94eaE199d827DAd837fac4cB
• GST2: 0x0000000000b3F879cb30FE243b4Dfee438691c04

GasToken is a new, cutting-edge Ethereum contract that allows users to tokenize gas on the Ethereum network, storing gas when it is cheap and using / deploying this gas when it is expensive. Using GasToken can subsidize high gas prices on transactions to do everything from arbitraging decentralized exchanges to buying into ICOs early. GasToken is also the first contract on the Ethereum network that allows users to buy and sell gas directly, enabling long-term “banking” of gas that can help shield users from rising gas prices.

How to mine GasTokens?

We have recently published a miner to mint your own GST1 or GST2 tokens on Ethereum or Ethereum Classic, you can find a guide for using it here:

How to use GasToken Miner

[gastokenminer] Table Of Contents What is GasToken-miner? Requirements Installing Nodejs & Python How to use gastoken-miner? Optimal Miner Configuration? 1. What is GasToken Miner? We have developed a miner that you can use to mine GST1 or GST2 tokens on Ethereum or Ethereum Classic. Unlike mining “traditional” coins or tokens, mining GasTokens does not require any intensive CPU or GPU use from your machine, so you can safely run this on any device. Essentially you are buying up gas today…

Do we see this as something that could become popular?

[Neuron]

Ethereum Classic blockchain is fairly sparsely populated right now, and gas prices of 0.0001 Gwei are not unheard of. Some people even manage to squeeze in 0-fee transactions (some miners allow that, but your transaction will have to wait for one of those).

If Ethereum Classic will have at least one moderately successful dApp in the short term it will experience the same issues as the ETH ethereum does, and gas prices will go up to 1-2 Gwei. At that point there should be a fairly steady demand for cheap gastokens (minted at the old, cheap gas prices).

[sam]

We have recently published an article to discuss GasToken further and how in the future it can be used to save fees for your trading transactions, we have also published a miner for GST1 or GST2 tokens:

[Wizward]

ECIP-1047: Reduce Gas Limit to 1 Million

Enjoy, happy minting.
constantly pushing gas since 2018.

happy new year saturn dude´s

[Magistocrat]

I am a little curious - is it possible this could greatly increase disk usage in the short term? I think it would be dangerous in this very young ecosystem to go from 30 GBs of disk usage for node operators over 1 terrabyte in a short amount of time.

We should have a gentleman’s agreement to postpone the GPU arms race as long as we can for the good of the network. It’s much easer to get new users up to speed if they don’t have to worry about GPU drivers and compatibility. It’s nice how anyone with just a CPU can compete fairly equally right now.

• Satoshi Nakamoto. Dec. 12, 2010

[Neuron]

Use of https://gastoken.io/ - positive or negative for the network?

[Magistocrat]

I remain unconvinced even after reading that article. The speculators behind this seem like academics with little knowledge of the day to day complexities of running a node. While the EVM may be efficient to deduplicate data, we have no idea that the actual implementation like Geth or Parity would actually do this - as Vitalik outlines in his post. I am also not convinced by vitalik’s 2-sentance post.

It’s possible this could spawn serious memory leaks, and node bloat, which the projects currently being understaffed can’t afford to deal with, right now.

I really, don’t care about the economics of it and gas fees, I just don’t think technical reality obeys economic laws like these “Ethereum Researchers” do.

[Neuron]

It’s possible this could spawn serious memory leaks,

if using smart contracts spawns memory leaks then we have a much larger problem than node bloat

we have no idea that the actual implementation like Geth or Parity would actually do this - as Vitalik outlines in his post

They probably don’t. However, if you feel that gastoken is a useful economical tool (store gas when blockchain is idle, release gas and thus disk space when the blockchain is busy) then you can propose an ECIP that would integrate gastoken into EVM via a precompiled smart contract that simulates current behavior without actual disk bloat.

over 1 terrabyte in a short amount of time.

I’m not going to be the one to do the math - you are the one coming up with these memory claims. I understand where you are coming from and appreciate you caring about the ecosystem, but throwing numbers like these needs to have factual backing. How much disk space does 1 GST2 occupy? It’s definitely on the order of kilobytes (at best) rather than gigabytes. Now calculate how much $ETC it costs to mint 1 GST2, and what GST2 total supply must be in order to get to 1 Tb of disk space. I’m sure you’ll find that understuffed teams will not have enough money to produce such bloat.

Current $ETH blockchain, which is widely used for all sorts of dumb stuff, currently takes 137Gb of disk space. Not even close to 1 Tb.

I think GasTokens are useful as they represent an options contract on blockchain’s utilization and allow regular blockchain users (i.e. oracles, trading bots) to have more predictable & less volatile costs - which is definitely a major plus for businesses that are trying to build on ETC.

P.S.
One can use filesystems which will do compression & deduplication for you without having to modify geth or parity code.

https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Compression

https://pthree.org/2012/12/18/zfs-administration-part-xi-compression-and-deduplication/

Would love to see a benchmark of how helpful such techniques might be.