Are the Gas Prices Oracle Reliable? A Case Study using the EthGasStation

Giuseppe Antonio Pierro (1) , Henrique Rocha (2) , Roberto Tonelli (1) , Stéphane Ducasse (3)

1 UniCa - Università degli Studi di Cagliari = University of Cagliari
2 Universiteit Antwerpen = University of Antwerpen [Antwerpen]
3 RMOD - Analyses and Languages Constructs for Object-Oriented Application Evolution

The Ethereum Blockchain is a distributed database that records all transactions and smart-contracts created on the platform. In Ethereum blockchain, the user needs to set a Gas price to get a transaction recorded. To have the transaction recorded, the Gas price has to be greater than or equal to the lowest Ethereum transaction fees. To help the users and smart contracts to set the right Gas price, the Gas Oracle categorizes the gas price into categories based on the interval of time the user might be willing to wait and for each of them suggests a gas price to set. The paper aims to verify the hypothesis that the predictions made by the EtherGasStation Oracle have a margin of error greater than the margin of error declared by it (2%). We collected data in two-months time from the EthGasStation Oracle which predict the Gas Price every time that 100 blocks are added to the Ethereum Blockchain. In the same time frame, two-months, we also collected over 10 million transactions from a Transaction Pool. By cross-checking the data collected by the Transaction Pool and the Gas Oracle, the study revealed that the Gas Oracle fails more often than it advertises.

Mots clés: Ethereum; Gas; transaction fees; Gas price categories

Domaines: Langage de programmation [cs.PL]

Giuseppe Antonio Pierro, Henrique Rocha, Roberto Tonelli, Stéphane Ducasse. Are the Gas Prices Oracle Reliable? A Case Study using the EthGasStation. 2020 IEEE International Workshop on Blockchain Oriented Software Engineering (IWBOSE), Feb 2020, London, Canada. ⟨hal-03357991⟩