CashboardGlossary · Onchain
What are gas fees?
Gas fees are what you pay a blockchain to process a transaction, set by how much computation it uses and how busy the network is at that moment.
How do gas fees work?
On EVM chains, gas measures work. A plain ETH transfer uses 21,000 gas, and a swap through a DEX router can use several hundred thousand. The fee is gas used times the gas price, and the price is quoted in gwei. One gwei is a billionth of an ETH.
Since the London upgrade in August 2021 (EIP-1559), an Ethereum fee has two parts. The protocol sets the base fee from demand for block space, and that part gets burned. The priority fee, or tip, goes to whoever builds the block. Layer 2s like Base and Arbitrum also pay Ethereum to post their data, and that got much cheaper when blobs arrived in March 2024.
Solana counts in compute units and lamports instead. Every signature pays a 5,000 lamport base fee. On top you can bid a priority fee for each compute unit, and during a hot launch that bid decides whether you land.
Run the numbers on an imaginary swap that uses 150,000 gas on Ethereum at 2 gwei. That is 300,000 gwei, or 0.0003 ETH. During a busy mint the gas price can jump twentyfold, and the same swap costs 0.006 ETH. On an L2 it would be a small fraction of either number.
Also called: gas, network fees, transaction fees, gwei.
Where do gas fees show up in Cashboard?
The Chain status widget shows the current fee for every network you add: the gas price in gwei on EVM chains, and the median recent priority fee on Solana. It refreshes every 15 seconds and draws a small fee trend line over the last few minutes. For Ethereum itself, the Ethereum pulse splits gas into Slow, Standard and Fast tiers with the dollar cost of a transfer and a swap, plus the blob fee rollups pay. The chain pulse prices the same transfer and swap on Base and Robinhood Chain, counting L2 execution only, without the L1 data fee. The L2 scoreboard ranks L2s by median transaction cost, from growthepie data used under CC BY 4.0. On Solana you can add Solana pulse for the 75th and 95th percentile fees and Jito tips as well.
Frequently asked questions
Why are gas fees sometimes so high?
Because too many people want the same block space at once, usually during a launch or a sharp market move. On Ethereum the base fee climbs automatically as blocks fill, and traders add tips on top to get in first.
Where can you read more about gas fees?
Related terms
Last reviewed . Market data in Cashboard comes from the providers named on each widget and may be delayed. Nothing here is financial advice.