Introduction

The cryptocurrency industry has witnessed a dramatic evolution in how new assets are launched – from the chaotic gold rush of Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) to curated exchange sales and the “fair launch” experiments that gave communities full ownership from day one.

Each model attempted to balance fundraising needs with fairness and decentralization, yet congestion and gas wars on popular blockchains revealed a new opportunity.

During periods of intense on-chain activity, users signal demand and value through the fees they’re willing to pay for block space.

Proof of Gas (PoG) was born from this observation: in a post-fair-launch world, can the very act of bidding for block space become the basis of distributing a new token?

PoG introduces a dramatic twist to token distribution. Instead of selling tokens to the highest bidder or allocating them to insiders, PoG turns a token launch into an open competition of on-chain economic signaling.

Participants compete by executing transactions and spending gas fees, effectively burning Ether (or other native fuel) to “prove” their appetite for the new asset.

The more gas an address expends within the PoG launch period, the larger its share of the token allocation.

This gas-fee-ranked issuance harnesses the innate market forces of blockchain networks: it treats block space demand as a proxy for investor interest, aligning token distribution with the intensity of on-chain activity.

Importantly, PoG is designed as a credibly neutral issuance mechanism – no whitelists, no early allocations, and no centralized gatekeepers.

Every participant faces the same rules and on-chain constraints, leveling the playing field such that economic cost (gas) is the only determinant of allocation.

The concept draws inspiration from prior fair launch successes (e.g. Bitcoin’s mining-based distribution and Yearn Finance’s 100% community token release) but adds a modern DeFi twist: using the gas market as a built-in, atomic market incentive layer.

In essence, PoG transforms the often-maligned gas bidding war into a feature of the launch – creating a viral, high-stakes event where fear of missing out (FOMO) drives coordination and community awareness.

The remainder of this paper introduces the PoG mechanism in detail, compares it with historical and contemporary asset issuance methods, and outlines the vision for PoG as a next-generation coordination layer in multi-chain crypto markets.