An eternal problem - Ethereum and the bloody gas. The solution is still somewhere out there with millions trying to find it, without any success, unfortunately. This doesn’t mean you can’t change your fees manually though and we are here to help. 🙌
What is gas in Ethereum?
“Gas” in Ethereum is a term that refers to the amount of computing resources required to complete an operation. Transferring a token or issuing a new asset, deploying or interacting with a smart contract - all of these operations engage the EVM resources to reach completion. Their volume is calculated in “gas”.
The gas price is indicated in Gwei, which apparently is just designation for a fraction of the Ethereum coin, equal to 0.00000001 ETH. 🤏
As said above, the gas required is dependent on the net load and the transaction volume. Combine that with Ethereum being relatively unscalable and you’ll end up with huge fees for bigger transactions. 📈
But the Merge?
PoS is certainly a huge improvement, but it isn’t a universal solution, capable of increasing the efficiency of every net aspect. The only visible difference after the Merge is the block time decreasing from 14-15 seconds to 12, meaning the net is around 20% less loaded at all times. The next big update, focused on fee reduction, is planned for the second half of 2023 with the Shanghai hardfork. Yet, there are a few ways to lower your commissions right now. 👍
But how?
The first quite obvious idea is L2 solutions. Projects like Arbitrum, Optimism, Loopring, ZKSync, Boba Network or Aztec Network can make a significant difference, when used for transferring crypto. While Ethereum charges you a minimum of 0.42$ for sending tokens and 2.11$ for swapping them, “rollups” have a range of 0.01 to 0.11$ and 0.03 to 0.39$ respectively. 😌
Not only rollups
Other L2 solutions available are sidechains - independent nets, with a unique security system and consensus algorithm, that aim to increase the transaction speed and decrease the price for the “mothering” network. The best example of an Ethereum side chain is Matic (Polygon). 🤟
Less obvious ways
- Choose the moment of the least network congestion. A statistic for that can be found on the Ethereumprice service. According to their data, you can plan your transactions avoiding high network load. 📆
- Some crypto wallets (MyEtherWallet and Metamask, for example) offer you manual commission amount adjustment, when sending a transfer. However, paying below the minimum recommended amount, might cause the transfer to fail. 🫤
- Transaction simulation. Before sending a transaction, evaluate its real value with helper services like Tenderly or DeFI Saver that simulate your transactions. 🧮
- Consider using other blockchains with cheaper transactions and faster transfer speeds. There is a whole bunch of EVM-compatible networks such as BNB Chain, Matic (Polygon PoS), or Fantom that share ecosystems similar to Ethereum. Projects independent of Ethereum, such as Solana, Cardano or Near might be an option too.
- Use dedicated apps like Balancer that can aggregate the transactions of multiple users, allowing you to lower fees for each one. Some DeFi projects offer discounts and other bonuses for transactions with assets from the Ethereum ecosystem. 🌐
We hope this article was helpful and you will never ever overpay again. Having the ability to manage your crypto is good, but managing it for cheap is even better 😉
Stay tuned 📻
