What Is a “Gas Token” and How Was It Intended to Address Fee Volatility?

Gas tokens (like GST2 or CHI) were a mechanism that allowed users to "tokenize" excess gas capacity during periods of low network congestion. They did this by exploiting the Ethereum storage refund mechanism.

The idea was to buy and store these tokens when gas prices were low and redeem them when prices were high, effectively locking in a lower gas price. However, this practice was largely eliminated by the EIP-3529 protocol upgrade.