Every change that rewired gas
"Gas price" sounds like one continuous series, but the machine generating it was redesigned repeatedly. The big ones for the math:
Genesis: gas as convention
Blocks are nearly empty; most wallets pay a hard-coded default (~50 gwei). Price reflects software defaults, not demand. A fee "market" barely exists.
Gas repricing after DoS attacks
Opcode costs rebalanced. Changes what gas buys, not how it's priced — minor for the indicator.
The fee market wakes up
Demand exceeds blockspace for the first time (ICO gas wars, then CryptoKitties). From here, gas price is a true first-price auction — users bid, the highest bids get in. Gas finally measures crowd urgency.
Supply inches up: 6.7M → 15M
Miners vote the block gas limit upward in steps. Each raise slightly deflates gas price for the same demand.
The auction is abolished
Fee formation is replaced by an algorithmic base fee that adjusts ±12.5% per block targeting half-full blocks — and is burned. Limit doubles to 30M. Same demand now produces a differently-shaped price series: smoother baseline, sharper spikes.
Proof of stake
Block times become a fixed 12s (+~3% throughput, more regular inclusion). Fee mechanics untouched — the smallest break of the four.
Blobs: activity stops paying L1 gas
Rollups move their data into blobs with a separate fee market. The largest source of L1 gas demand walks away overnight; user activity migrates to L2s where it no longer registers in L1 gas price at all. The biggest break in the series.
Pectra + relentless limit raises
Gas limit: 30→36M (Feb) → 45M (Jul) → 60M (Nov). Pectra (May 7) doubles blob capacity 3/6→6/9. Supply grows ~2× in one year while demand sits on L2s — structural fee deflation.
PeerDAS: the deflation continues
Blob capacity steps to 10/15, then 14/21; 80–100M gas limits proposed for 2026. Any indicator using absolute fee levels is permanently broken; even relative ones must adapt fast.
Four epochs, four different machines
Grouping by how the gas price was formed: E1 auction · immature E2 auction · mature E3 EIP-1559 burn E4 blob / L2. Two raw series below — the familiar per-transfer fee, and total network fee revenue (gas used × gas price × ETH price), which is more robust when the gas limit doubles.
Fee per transfer & total fee revenue, by epoch
The structural break, in numbers
| Epoch | Period | Mean fee | Structural drift | Time in high tide | Time in low tide |
|---|
Verdict: one formula does NOT fit all four epochs
Fees drifted +372%/yr in E1, +84%/yr in E2, then −52%/yr in E3 and −83%/yr in E4. The v1 z-score assumes a stable baseline, so in the blob era it sits in "low tide" 33% of the time and reaches "high tide" barely 1% — the indicator is being dragged by protocol engineering, not market mood. The 365-day rolling window self-heals within ~a year of each break (that's why v1 still worked), but every break costs it accuracy right when it matters. The math must adapt.
Six candidate formulas enter
Each variant was scored against the 13 ground-truth tops & bottoms (hits within ±120 days, median lag, false signals) and on strategy equity with next-day execution. Same hysteresis machinery as v1, thresholds grid-searched per variant.
Results — all candidates, unedited
| Candidate | Idea | Events hit | Med. lag | False sig. | Equity vs hold ×585 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| V0 — Gas Tide v1 | per-transfer fee z + momentum | 9/13 | 67d | 10 | ×941 (1.61×) |
| V1 — epoch-aware z | z-score reset at each epoch boundary | 7/13 | 64d | 12 | ×608 (1.04×) |
| V2 — detrended z | z of residual vs rolling 1-yr trend | 9/13 | 50d | 12 | ×9 (0.02×) |
| V3 — Revenue Tide ★ | same math, fuel = total fee revenue | 9/13 | 66d | 10 | ×1,430 (2.44×) |
| V4 — detrended revenue | V2 + V3 combined | 10/13 | 51d | 11 | ×13 (0.02×) |
| V5 — revenue + tx momentum | fee level + transaction-count derivative | 9/13 | 64d | 9 | ×1,272 (2.17×) |
| V6/V7 — hybrids | blends of V3 + V4 | 8/13 | ~63d | 13 | ×18–29 (0.05×) |
Two clean findings — and one trap
Finding 1: switching the raw series from per-transfer fee to total fee revenue (V3) beats v1 on equity by 52% with identical math — revenue is naturally robust to gas-limit raises, because when supply doubles, price halves but volume holds. Finding 2: detrending (V4) is the best turning-point caller — 10/13 events, lowest lag. The trap: detrending also deletes the trend that a hold-strategy must ride; as a strategy it returns ×13 vs ×585 hold. Mixing the two (V6/V7) poisons both. So: two tools, two jobs — no single formula wins both contests, and that's a real result, not a failure.
Revenue Tide — Gas Tide v2 ★
Identical formula to the main page — z-score level + 90-day momentum, ±0.2 hysteresis band — but reading total daily fee revenue instead of per-transfer fees.
(next-day execution)
the COVID 2020 bottom
(v1 exited at $4,307)
19 signals · ~2/yr
ETH price · Revenue Tide calls
v2 vs v1 vs holding
Every v2 trade
| # | Bought | at | Sold | at | Return |
|---|
The Turn Confirmer (V4)
Detrended revenue z-score + momentum. It is not a strategy — it's a dated stamp that a major turn has happened. It confirmed 10 of 13 major tops & bottoms, typically ~6–7 weeks after the extreme — and nailed the COVID bottom same-day. Use case: "is this dip a cycle turn, or noise?"
Turn confirmations on the price history
Scorecard against all 13 ground-truth turns
| Actual extreme | ETH | Confirmed on | Delay |
|---|
⚖️ Lab rules — why this page isn't the homepage (yet)
- 13 events, 6+ variants, grid-searched thresholds. That's a lot of searching over little ground truth — some of V3's edge over v1 is likely luck. It earns the homepage only after calling the next turn live.
- The epoch problem is real but not fully solved. Revenue reduces the blob-era bias (low-tide time 33%→29%) but doesn't cure it; detrending cures it but can't hold a trend. An epoch-proof single formula remains open.
- E4 keeps mutating. Fusaka BPOs and 80–100M gas proposals mean the deflation isn't done. Every supply jump is a small fresh break.
- Same caveats as v1: daily averages, no fees/slippage in equity curves, not financial advice.