Understanding GasToken Adoption in the Ethereum Blockchain

Abstract

GasTokens are created by smart contracts executing in the Ethereum blockchain to support a form of transaction fee pre-payment. Even though GasTokens had a period of significant activity on Ethereum (regularly surpassing half of the overall weekly smart contract creation and destruction activities), few systematic studies have been conducted on GasToken usage and its effect on the blockchain network. This paper focuses on understanding the adoption of GasTokens on Ethereum since May of 2020. We first analyze the usage patterns, including the creation, destruction, and holding of GasTokens, then report several price findings related to GasTokens, and compare the fees paid by users submitting transactions that create and destroy GasTokens to the fees paid by all the transactions in the network over different time periods. We characterize the benefits obtained by GasToken transaction senders and report the impact of GasToken creations and destructions on the major mining pools.