The blockchain can't hide its excitement
1 · Gas = demand
Gas is the toll for using Ethereum. It's set by pure supply & demand: more people transacting → higher fees. It can't be faked or wished higher.
2 · Fees move in tides
In manias, people pay $28+ per transaction. In despair, the same transfer costs a fraction of a cent. That swing is the tide — and it tracks the market cycle.
3 · Turns mark the cycle
When the tide turns out from a high, manias are ending. When it comes back in from a low, the crowd is quietly returning. Those turns are the signal.
Every call since 2017, on one chart
ETH's full price history with every ▲ BUY and ▼ SELL the Gas Tide signal produced — computed only from gas-fee data available at the time, no hindsight. Shaded bands show when the tide was unusually high (euphoria) or low (apathy).
ETH price · Gas Tide buy & sell calls
The Gas Tide oscillator
Eleven years of gas, two ways to measure it
The same fee, in crypto terms (gwei — Ethereum's internal unit for gas) and in dollars (what a simple ETH transfer actually cost that day). Note the dotted markers: upgrades like the L2 era and the Dencun update structurally crushed fees — which is why Gas Tide measures fees relative to their own recent past, not in absolute terms.
Gas price (gwei) & cost of a simple transfer (USD)
ETH price, full history
Did it actually work?
Two independent tests. First: what happened to ETH after high-tide and low-tide days — across all 3,900+ days of history. Second: the literal trade list — follow every call with no discretion, switching between ETH and cash.
Median ETH return after a day in each tide zone vs. all days baseline. High-tide days led the biggest gains — euphoria means the bull run is on (the danger is when the tide then turns). Low-tide days led the weakest returns until the tide turned back in.
Following the tide vs. just holding
Every trade the signal produced
| # | Bought | at | Sold | at | Return | Note |
|---|
The two formulas
Both work on one number: the daily average fee of a simple ETH transfer, in dollars (average gas price × 21,000 gas × ETH price). Both look only backward — nothing in the math peeks at the future.
1 · Tide Level — "how high is the water?"
Asks: are fees unusually expensive or unusually cheap compared to the last year? Above +1.5 = euphoria (high tide). Below −1.25 = apathy (low tide). Using a rolling yardstick is what keeps it honest across eras — 60 gwei was euphoric in 2024, while 5 gwei was euphoric in late 2025.
2 · Tide Momentum — "which way is it flowing?"
The derivative — is fee pressure building or draining, regardless of its level? This is what caught the August 2025 top: fees were low by 2021 standards, but they had quadrupled in four months. Direction mattered, not altitude.
The Gas Tide signal = (LEVEL + MOMENTUM) ÷ 2
The average of the two, with a neutral band in the middle so it doesn't flip-flop. Crossing up through the band = tide coming in (buy). Crossing down = tide going out (sell). That's the entire system — two thresholds, no exceptions, no overrides.
⚖️ What this is not — read before believing
- Few cycles. Ethereum has had ~5 major cycles. Any backtest on 5 cycles can flatter itself. The forward-return tables (3,900+ days) are the more robust evidence; the trade list is the more impressive one.
- Threshold sensitivity. The ±0.25 band was chosen by backtest. Nearby values still produce sensible calls at similar dates, but the headline multiple moves around. Treat the exact ×941 as illustrative, not a promise.
- Structural change. Rollups and the Dencun upgrade permanently lowered fees. The rolling z-scores adapt within ~a year, but a future fee-market redesign could blind the indicator for a while.
- Known misses. It was ~3 months early selling the 2021 double-top (sold the May mania, re-bought, took a small loss on the November chop), and panic crashes (COVID, March 2020) spike fees during the fall — the tide called the re-entry beautifully but not the crash itself.
- The live record so far. The first fully-live round trip is trade #10 above: bought a bear-market rally in April 2026, sold two months later for −32% — the worst trade in the system's recorded history. It stays on the page. The beta lab is testing an upgrade that exited that whipsaw seven weeks earlier and is far less threshold-sensitive; it takes over only if it calls the next turn live.
- Not financial advice. This is a public experiment in reading on-chain data. Do your own research.