Gas

About Gas (GAS)

What Is Gas (GAS)?

GAS is the fee and utility asset of the Neo blockchain and the second half of Neo's dual-token design: NEO carries governance rights, while GAS pays for computation, storage and transaction processing. It is not a deployed token contract but a native contract built into the protocol, registered on Neo N3 mainnet as GasToken with script hash 0xd2a4cff31913016155e38e474a2c06d08be276cf. GAS is divisible to eight decimal places, and new units are minted per block by the protocol rather than by mining.

Official resources:

• Neo website and GAS overview: https://neo.org/neogas
• Fee reference: https://docs.neo.org/docs/n3/fees.html
• Governance and incentives: https://developers.neo.org/docs/n3/foundation/governance
• Source code: https://github.com/neo-project/neo

Who Founded Gas? (History)

GAS exists because of Neo, which began as AntShares, launched in 2014 by Da Hongfei and Erik Zhang. The project published its delegated Byzantine Fault Tolerance whitepaper in 2016 and rebranded to Neo in June 2017, at which point the fee asset took the GAS name; under the earlier branding it is commonly described as having been called AntCoin. The decisive date today is August 2, 2021, when Neo N3 mainnet launched and restructured GAS as a native contract with new issuance and fee rules.

How Gas Works

Neo N3 mints five GAS per block. Per Neo's developer documentation that issuance splits roughly 10 percent to NEO holders, 10 percent to the committee and consensus nodes, and 80 percent to holders who actually vote, settling when NEO is transferred or votes are cast, with no staking required. Spending splits in two: system fees pay for resources consumed inside NeoVM and are burned, while network fees cover transaction size and verification and go to the consensus node that packaged the block.

Key Ecosystem Components

• NeoVM, which meters execution and charges system fees per opcode.
• The native contract set, which a live mainnet node reports as ContractManagement, StdLib, CryptoLib, LedgerContract, NeoToken, GasToken, PolicyContract, RoleManagement, OracleContract, Notary and Treasury.
• The Neo committee, 21 members elected by NEO votes, which sets fee parameters.
• Consensus nodes, the seven top-voted committee members that produce blocks.

GAS Token Utility

GAS is spent on every state-changing action: transfers, contract invocations, deployment, storage writes and oracle requests. It is also the reward stream that makes NEO productive, since holding and voting NEO generates GAS without locking the underlying asset, and because system fees are burned while new GAS is minted, supply moves with network usage.

What Makes Gas Unique?

The strict split between a governance asset and a fee asset, which Neo describes as the first dual-token model on a public blockchain, means fee volatility does not dilute voting rights and voting does not require giving up liquidity. The largest share of issuance also goes to holders who vote, so the fee token doubles as a turnout incentive.

How Gas Differs from Similar Projects

Ethereum uses one asset for both fees and staking, so holders cannot separate the roles. Ontology copies the two-token pattern with ONT and ONG and VeChain does the same with VET and VTHO, while Theta Fuel is generated for stakers rather than voters. GAS is distinguished by Neo's governance-weighted split and by destroying all system fees.

Use Cases of Gas

Users spend GAS to move NEP-17 tokens, mint and transfer NEP-11 assets, call contracts and pay for storage. Developers budget it for deployment, NEO holders treat it as a yield stream earned by voting, and exchanges hold working balances to cover withdrawals.

How Gas Is Secured

GAS inherits Neo's delegated Byzantine Fault Tolerance consensus, in which candidates stand for election, NEO holders vote, the top 21 form the committee and the top seven become consensus nodes. Neo's documentation notes elections require more than 20 percent of NEO to participate, and votes are recalculated every 21 blocks. dBFT gives single-block finality.

Risks and Considerations

The validator set is small by design. Seven consensus nodes and a 21-member committee give fast finality but concentrate block production, and Neo's own site notes roughly half of NEO is reserved by the Neo Foundation, which shapes voting outcomes. Fee parameters are set by committee vote rather than fixed in protocol, and the council has cut fees substantially before, so usage costs can change without a hard fork. Under N3 GAS also has no fixed maximum supply, and its demand is entirely derived from Neo activity.

Why Gas Matters

GAS is one of the clearest working examples of splitting governance from network fuel, an idea later designs have repeatedly borrowed. Its issuance split and burn mechanics wire fee policy, voting incentives and supply dynamics together in protocol rather than in off-chain agreements.

Where Can You Buy Gas (GAS)?

GAS is listed on a number of centralized exchanges and can also be acquired without buying it, since holding NEO in a self-custody Neo wallet generates GAS and voting increases the share received. Check the live markets and pairs on this page, and note that exchanges differ in whether they pass through GAS generated by customer balances.

Storage Options After Purchase

GAS is held in Neo-compatible wallets such as NeoLine and OneGate, and in the reference Neo-CLI and Neo-GUI clients, several of which support hardware wallet signing. Hold it on Neo N3 addresses, since assets on Neo Legacy addresses require migration.

Related Coins

• Neo (NEO)
• Ontology Gas (ONG)
• VeThor Token (VTHO)
• Theta Fuel (TFUEL)