$GWEI is the governance token of the ETHGas Foundation.

It is the primary tool allowing the community to steer the commoditization of blockspace and the Realtime Ethereum engine. Rather than optimizing for short-term activity, $GWEI is designed to support sustained decision-making as Ethereum blockspace markets evolve to make Ethereum 100x faster.

By staking your tokens, you transition from a beneficiary to a builder, actively participating in:

• Decentralized Stewardship: You act as a guardian of the ecosystem, holding voting weight to approve protocol parameters and prevent malicious updates.
• Protocol Calibration: You signal priority for the Realtime Ethereum economy, ensuring the protocol evolves based on user consensus rather than centralized planning.
• Aligned Incentives: By committing your tokens to the vote-escrow contract, you align your long-term interests with the protocol. This commitment grants you enhanced Governance Power, allowing you to participate in the distribution of protocol emissions directed toward active participants.

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Tokenomics

$GWEI will be deployed as an ERC-20 token on Ethereum Mainnet with a total supply of 10 billion.

We have designed a sustainable distribution model for $GWEI with a 10-year horizon for ecosystem growth. The majority of the supply is dedicated to the ecosystem and the long-term health of the protocol.

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Governance

The $GWEI token is the steering wheel for the ETHGas ecosystem. Its primary function is to enable decentralized stewardship of the protocol.

Holders who stake $GWEI receive $veGWEI (voting escrow), granting them the right to propose and vote on critical changes, including:

• Protocol Parameters: Adjusting fees, incentives and collateral factors to keep the market efficient.
• Supply Dynamics: Managing how protocol fees are utilized to maintain ecosystem health (e.g., offsetting emissions or allocating treasury tokens).
• Smart Contract Upgrades: Approving migrations or new integrations to ensure the protocol remains the standard for Realtime Ethereum.

This structure ensures that governance influence accrues to participants who are aligned with the long-term health of the system.

To enhance scalability and decision quality, $veGWEI supports vote delegation. Token holders can delegate their voting power to trusted individuals, organizations, or professional delegates, while retaining full ownership of their tokens. Voting power is amplified by the duration of your stake. Longer lock durations or higher stake amounts confer proportionately greater voting power. This protects the protocol from short-term opportunists and rewards true long-term believers.

The $veGWEI community governs the protocol treasury. Through proposals, holders decide how to allocate resources for ecosystem initiatives, developer grants, and strategic partnerships. Finally, $veGWEI governance serves as the final authority over protocol upgrades, parameter changes, and emergency actions. While operational responsibilities may be delegated to specialized committees or smart contracts, ultimate decision-making power rests with the governance process.

Day-One Alignment at Launch

At launch, $GWEI distributed through the community airdrop will be auto-staked for 30 days. This approach ensures that early contributors enter the system as active governance participants from day one, rather than passive holders. It establishes an initial governance base that reflects prior participation in Ethereum mainnet activity and ETHGas community engagement.

Moving forward, to participate in governance and earn yield, holders can lock their $GWEI for a duration of their choice, ranging from 1 week to 4 years, to receive veGWEI (Vote-Escrowed GWEI).

veGWEI utilizes a linear decay model where Time = Power. A 4-year lock grants significantly more voting weight (and potential yield) than a 1-week lock. This ensures that the loudest voices in governance belong to long-term guardians, not short-term speculators.

Early-Stage Staking Incentives

Following TGE, ETHGas will run a structured staking incentive program to bootstrap governance participation.

These incentives take the form of programmatic emissions intended to support early coordination while protocol utility and fee-based value capture continue to come online. The goal is to encourage participation during the network’s formative stage, not to signal fixed or guaranteed outcomes.

Cycle-Based Structure

The staking program is organized into discrete cycles with varying reward weights.

Early cycles are designed to prioritize initial participation, followed by normalization phases as governance activity stabilizes and the ecosystem matures. Reward rates and emissions may vary by cycle and are subject to change as the system evolves.

These mechanics are designed to support long-term participation and governance alignment, not short-term optimization.

$GWEI is your key to governing the Realtime Ethereum economy.

Receipients of the $GWEI community airdrop via ETHGas Foundation’s claim website (https://ethgasfoundation.org/) are committed, real Ethereum users with documented gas spend and engagement with the ecosystem. As we continue forging a gasless future, we look forward to doing it with the governance and commitment of these users.

This is the $GWEI.