Understanding Ethereum Gas

[bitmover]

In a world computer, a program that abuses resources gets to abuse the world’s resources
How does Ethereum constrain the resources used by a smart contract if it cannot predict resource use in advance?
To answer this challenge, Ethereum introduces a metering mechanism called gas.

- Mastering Ethereum Book

Gas measures the amount of computational power that an operation (transaction) will consume. Gas is what fuels ethereum network. It is also what protects it against spam and Ddos attacks.

Payment for computation is made in the form of a gas fee, must be paid in Ethereum native token (eth).

Gas Limit and Gas Price attributes define the total cost of your transactions:

Code: [Select]

Transaction Cost = Gas Limit *  (base fee + priority fee)
Base fee: Amount of Gwei you are willing to spend per unit of gas.
Priority fee (tip): it is a tip that you add as an incentive for miners so they have incentives not to mine empty blocks.
Gas Limit: Maximum amount of units of gas that you will spend on the transaction.

Gas is usually quoted in Gwei. Gwei is a unit of of Ethereum.
The smallest ethereum denomination is wei. Both as named after Wei Dai,  the creator of b-money.





Monitor Gas Price
https://etherscan.io/gastracker

References:
https://github.com/ethereumbook/ethereumbook
https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/gas/ (main article used in this post)

[Yamane_Keto]

I used to think that Gwei is the smallest unit of something like a satoshi, not Gwei.


How are gas fees a solution to DDOS attacks? Without filtering transactions, gas fees cannot be a solution. On the contrary, they may cause the inability to broadcast transactions, even if they are with higher fees.
Does anyone know why POS was promoted as solving the problem of high fees?

[bitmover]

How are gas fees a solution to DDOS attacks? Without filtering transactions, gas fees cannot be a solution. On the contrary, they may cause the inability to broadcast transactions, even if they are with higher fees.

You answered the question by yourself.
Gas fees cause the "inability to broadcast transactions".

Transactions become so expensive, that only billionaires could perform a DDOS attack to ethereum protocol. And they coudn't do it for long... because it is expensive.

[Yamane_Keto]

How are gas fees a solution to DDOS attacks? Without filtering transactions, gas fees cannot be a solution. On the contrary, they may cause the inability to broadcast transactions, even if they are with higher fees.

You answered the question by yourself.
Gas fees cause the "inability to broadcast transactions".

Transactions become so expensive, that only billionaires could perform a DDOS attack to ethereum protocol. And they coudn't do it for long... because it is expensive.

In the same way, normal users will not be able to broadcast the transaction due to the high fees, and if the fees decrease, the DDOS attack will return.
Success in stopping these attacks lies in blocking or removing addresses that cause spam or from broadcasting transactions, and gas fees do not have a mechanism to create such filters, so they will not prevent DDOS attacks.

[bitmover]

How are gas fees a solution to DDOS attacks? Without filtering transactions, gas fees cannot be a solution. On the contrary, they may cause the inability to broadcast transactions, even if they are with higher fees.

You answered the question by yourself.
Gas fees cause the "inability to broadcast transactions".

Transactions become so expensive, that only billionaires could perform a DDOS attack to ethereum protocol. And they coudn't do it for long... because it is expensive.

In the same way, normal users will not be able to broadcast the transaction due to the high fees, and if the fees decrease, the DDOS attack will return.
Success in stopping these attacks lies in blocking or removing addresses that cause spam or from broadcasting transactions, and gas fees do not have a mechanism to create such filters, so they will not prevent DDOS attacks.

Well, it is a way to protect the network from DDOS attacks because it is expensive to do so. It is not 100%, because someone (or a group of people) may be willing to spend a lot of money to attack it. BUt, it is a protection.

[yhiaali3]

Thank you for the good explanation about Ethereum network gas.

As you know, Ethereum moved from the POW algorithm to POS, and there was also more than one upgrade on the Ethereum network. My question is, how does this affect Ethereum gas fees?

I expected to see a significant reduction in fees after all these upgrades, but what I see is that the desired effect has not been achieved yet. I mean, there has already been a reduction in fees, but not to the sufficient or desired degree that network users want to see. Why do you think?

[bitmover]

Thank you for the good explanation about Ethereum network gas.

As you know, Ethereum moved from the POW algorithm to POS, and there was also more than one upgrade on the Ethereum network. My question is, how does this affect Ethereum gas fees?

I expected to see a significant reduction in fees after all these upgrades, but what I see is that the desired effect has not been achieved yet. I mean, there has already been a reduction in fees, but not to the sufficient or desired degree that network users want to see. Why do you think?

I also expected gas prices to go down once pos was implemented.  However,  it didn't happen.
 A simple uniswap swap is about 17usd, and a eth transaction is about 1 usd
https://etherscan.io/gastracker

[yhiaali3]

I also expected gas prices to go down once pos was implemented.  However,  it didn't happen.
 A simple uniswap swap is about 17usd, and a eth transaction is about 1 usd
https://etherscan.io/gastracker

The Eth transaction fee of about $1 is not a lot, but the $17 Uniswap swap fee is a lot, and of course this number can increase significantly as the swap value increases, so why all these high fees? Since the Eth transaction fees on the network are not that great?

Is it because of the fees Uniswap takes on each swap? Are the fees the same on all decentralized exchanges?

[bitmover]

I also expected gas prices to go down once pos was implemented.  However,  it didn't happen.
 A simple uniswap swap is about 17usd, and a eth transaction is about 1 usd
https://etherscan.io/gastracker

The Eth transaction fee of about $1 is not a lot, but the $17 Uniswap swap fee is a lot, and of course this number can increase significantly as the swap value increases, so why all these high fees? Since the Eth transaction fees on the network are not that great?

Is it because of the fees Uniswap takes on each swap? Are the fees the same on all decentralized exchanges?

Amount of gas determined by the amount of computational calculations that the smartcontract does. Uniswap has a complex and expensive smartcontract, this is why the fee is high for the swap.

It is like a very big transaction

[Mr. Magkaisa]

          -   This is literally GAS that is extracted from users in order to pay for the execution of transactions carried out via the Ethereum network. It functions similarly to network fuel as a result. To preserve network security at the same time.

In summary, Ethereum's GAS plays a critical role in the network's overall functionality. However, users find it difficult to deal with its volatility. It is hoped that going forward, there will be improvements in terms of development and scaling solutions.

[bitmover]

In summary, Ethereum's GAS plays a critical role in the network's overall functionality. However, users find it difficult to deal with its volatility. It is hoped that going forward, there will be improvements in terms of development and scaling solutions.

The point is that the fees are high because the network is congested. There is a limited block space and to get in you must pay. If there are too many people trying to get in, you need to pay higher

Lots of people using ethereum network. Too many smartcontracts which take a lot of space in each block...

I remember in 2017/2018/2019 it was basically free to move ethereum or any ERC-20...

[Stompix]

The point is that the fees are high because the network is congested. There is a limited block space and to get in you must pay. If there are too many people trying to get in, you need to pay higher
Lots of people using ethereum network. Too many smartcontracts which take a lot of space in each block...

And it will keep being like this until they realize that you can't move everything on the second layers if you don't have the space on the first layer to generate enough transactions to power the second ones, you can try and do whatever gimmick you want but in the end, the bottleneck will still be there, and the sharp drop in fees is not always because of tech advancements but more of fees being to high to consider ETH as a solution.

Buterin has dugged himself in the same hole as Bitcoin, upgrade after upgrade and still the same thing when you look at the fees.

[bitmover]

And it will keep being like this until they realize that you can't move everything on the second layers if you don't have the space on the first layer to generate enough transactions to power the second ones, you can try and do whatever gimmick you want but in the end, the bottleneck will still be there, and the sharp drop in fees is not always because of tech advancements but more of fees being to high to consider ETH as a solution.

Buterin has dugged himself in the same hole as Bitcoin, upgrade after upgrade and still the same thing when you look at the fees.

I would say that ethereum fees are way more expensive than bitcoin's

Have you ever moved tokens there?

https://etherscan.io/gastracker#chart_gasprice
A simple swap is about 50 usd and a NFT sale nearly 90 usd.

Simple moving eth  is about 3 usd.

This is the time when we realize how services like exch.cx are cheap, although some trust is involved

[Stompix]

I would say that ethereum fees are way more expensive than bitcoin's
Have you ever moved tokens there?

Depends on what you do when you do, after all normally you would compare a smart contract with something else, like minting runes for example, fees can skyrocket from case to case since swapping doesn't really have an equivalent on BTC it's a bit of apple and oranges, same with costs on second layers, yeah some are dirt cheap but if the L1 bridging is costing you $100 it stops being that cheap.

You simply can't have all this on a single chain and keep it small and tidy, you either increase capacity and be done with or you restrict it to just simple tx, it's either Visa or YouTube... But this will be a never-ending debate, I'm sure four years from now we're going to have the same issues.

[bayu7adi]

Bruh... I haven't used ETH or ERC20 Tokens for 4 years, and I remember hearing about the Proof Of Stake consensus mechanism from Ethereum 2 years ago... isn't that what will make Ethereum transaction fees lower??
So will Ethereum now and forever continue to use the Proof of Work system or is there a continuation of Vitalik's idea to reduce transaction fees on the Ethereum network?



And for the picture above, doesn't this apply to transactions sending ETH from one wallet to another wallet? it's all under $1