What is Gas?

What is Gas?

The term ‘gas’ refers to the fee that is incurred when executing a transaction on the Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Avalanche and other platform-type blockchains.

This money goes directly to the miners who are the major source of computing power. Miners are necessary for verifying transactions and keeping the network functioning.

Here we review the gas function within the Ethereum blockchain.

ETH is the petrol needed to fuel all your financial procedures. Each time you make a transaction, you have to pay a gas fee. The same applies when you place a bid, settle an NFT you may have won in an auction or when sending it to another wallet.

Gas becomes expensive when the Ethereum network is overloaded. However, developers are currently working on solving this problem.

If you want to ensure your transaction is completed quickly, you’ll need to set a high gas fee. But if the network is too busy, your transaction could fail. If you prefer, you can wait until the gas price goes down before initiating a transaction. You can also submit your ideal price and wait until the network processes it. Follow https://ethgasstation.info/ to check the current gas prices.

Why is gas so expensive?

Sometimes the Ethereum network experiences a huge volume of transactions. 1 block in this ecosystem may include only a limited number of transactions. High gas fees depend on the current supply and demand. Thus, miners are incentivized to accept transactions offering higher fees.

To be or not to be: how to deal with gas fees

There are always two options: to accept the high gas fee or not. When you are executing a transaction in your wallet, you’re given three options regarding the price and speed you want. You should take into account that when choosing the lowest gas price, your transaction will take the longest amount of time to complete.

You can make your transaction go faster by paying a higher gas fee. When the transaction order is created in your wallet, click on the ‘Speed Up’ button. That’s how to re-submit the same transaction with a higher fee in order for it to be processed quicker.

If you want to cancel a transaction, click on the ‘Cancel’ button. You should bear in mind that this can only be done if the transaction is still pending. If the transaction is cancelled or it fails, you still have to pay the gas fee to the Ethereum network.