Ethereum restaking protocol EtherFi has signed a three‑year deal to supply 3 billion dollars worth of ETH as validator liquidity to ETHGas. The agreement sends roughly 40% of EtherFi’s current ETH holdings into ETHGas’ High Performance Staking (HPS) Service, deployed as soon as the deal takes effect. EtherFi manages more than 2.8 million staked ETH, mainly through its eETH and weETH liquid tokens.
ETHGas runs a marketplace for Ethereum block space and validator services. It lets validators sell future blockspace commitments and helps applications secure block inclusion at predictable fees. ETHGas says the EtherFi deal is a major step toward building forward‑pricing infrastructure for Ethereum blockspace.
Under the agreement, EtherFi will also use ETHGas’ preconfirmation platform exclusively during the three‑year term. That platform provides early assurances that specific transactions will be included in upcoming blocks, which is useful for institutional users.
How the $3B Validator Liquidity is Meant to Work
The committed ETH will back validators plugged into ETHGas’ high‑performance staking and blockspace markets. These validators earn both consensus‑layer rewards for securing the network and execution‑layer rewards, including priority fees and MEV from ordered transactions.
By pre‑selling blockspace and using blockspace futures, ETHGas aims to increase and stabilize validator returns over time. EtherFi says the structure should boost yields for its restakers while smoothing out the volatility of MEV income. Part of the pitch is that large, committed capital can access optimized MEV routes that smaller solo validators cannot.
ETHGas also participates in the Open Gas Initiative, which experiments with “gasless” or rebated transactions. As a result, some users staking via EtherFi could see specific transactions effectively subsidized, reducing gas costs for supported apps.
A Push to Make Ethereum Blockspace More Institutional‑Friendly
ETHGas positions its marketplace as a way to turn Ethereum blockspace into a predictable resource for developers and institutions. By locking in block commitments and pricing ahead of time, it wants to reduce surprise fee spikes and failed trades.
The project has attracted backing from investors like Polychain Capital and launched the governance token GWEI, which now has a market cap of nearly $120 million. With EtherFi’s capital, ETHGas says it can support “real‑time Ethereum” with higher throughput and lower latency for order‑flow‑heavy users.
For EtherFi, the partnership builds on its validator deployment on ETHGas in late 2025. The platform sees validator deals like this as a path to a non‑custodial, on‑chain “banking” layer for staked ETH.
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