tl;dr: we're launching a new market that allows you to trade on Base L2 sequencer's revenue by tracking its daily transaction fees.
This instrument is a unique way of betting on the fundamentals earnings ability of an ecosystem, without interacting with the platform’s native tokens (in this case, Base doesn’t have a token).
In another sense, you can think of trading Base L2 Gas markets as a prediction on how much onchain activities will change over the next two weeks. This is particularly interesting when there are large events such as NFT or airdrops coming up.
For large gas consumers, this is to be a viable solution to partially hedge against rising costs.
Quick refresher on the core mechanics of trading on Alkimiya
All markets on Alkimiya are facilitated by Silica Pools. A pool is the set of all LONG and SHORT positions within the same period. Users can enter anytime during the pool’s period.
For example, in the first half of September, Base L2 users spent 268 ETH on gas, and in the second half of September, it was 437 ETH, a 63% increase in just 2 weeks.
Data source: https://base.blockscout.com/stats/txnsFee
Enter a LONG position
Think Base L2 activity is going to pick up next two weeks? By taking a buy position, you're anticipating that the total gas paid by users ends up higher than when you entered.
Enter a SHORT position
Expecting Base L2 activity to drop in this next two weeks? You may want to hedge against that by taking a sell position. In this case, you're speculating that the total gas paid by users will end up lower than your entry price.