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What is Gas Fee?
Gas fees are transaction costs on blockchain networks (especially Ethereum) paid to validators for processing your transaction. Higher network congestion = higher gas fees.
Full Explanation
Gas is the unit measuring computational effort required to execute operations on Ethereum. Gas fees are paid in ETH (denominated in Gwei — 1 Gwei = 0.000000001 ETH). Fee = Gas Units × Gas Price. During high network activity, gas fees spike dramatically (sometimes $50-200 per transaction). Solutions: Layer 2 networks (Polygon, Arbitrum, Base) offer 100x cheaper fees; Ethereum's EIP-1559 introduced a base fee + tip model. Other blockchains (Solana, Avalanche) have much lower fees by design.
Example
Swapping tokens on Ethereum mainnet might cost $5-50 in gas. The same swap on Polygon costs less than ₹1. That's why Layer 2s are popular.
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Last updated: 2026-03-21
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