Upvest raises €900k to help optimize gas fee estimates on Ethereum

German-based startup Upvest has raised €900,000 (~$1 million) from the European Regional Development Fund to build a prediction tool for Ethereum gas fees. The product uses on-chain data points like the unconfirmed transaction count or the number of active miners to estimate the optimal gas fee for a given transaction. Upvest says its recommendation tool has improved the fee discovery process by 18% based on its currently deployed model. The new round comes six months after Upvest, which primarily focuses on tokenizing financial assets, secured a €7 million Series A.

Why it matters:

• As noted by Upvest, Ethereum’s fee market can be cost-inefficient at times. Failure to monitor the current rate of fees can lead to users either overpaying (unnecessary loss of funds) or underpaying (long or infinite wait times) for a transaction. These unideal outcomes have led to proposals aiming to revamp Ethereum’s fee market, including the popular EIP-1559. While these proposals might offer long-term improvement to some of these gas-related issues, Upvest’s recommendation tool could serve as a variable short-term solution, especially with ETH fees on the rise.
• The fee prediction tool also fits within Upvest’s mission of tokenizing securities. Issuing and distributing new tokens can be an expensive process, as most contract calls and each transaction would warrant a gas payment.