How to Reduce & Save Ethereum Gas Fees

If you’ve ever sent a transaction on the Ethereum blockchain, you’ll be familiar with the concept of paying gas. But with the rise of popularity of the Ethereum blockchain, these prices are rising out of control. So, if you’re tired of wasting money on gas and would rather keep your Ethereum for trading or to HODL, here are some ways that you can save money on Ethereum gas fees.

What is ETH Gas?

Ethereum Gas is a payment made to the miners that covers your transactions.  When you send a transaction on the Ethereum network, you have to pay for this gas. You’ll find an increase in gas fees and, therefore, higher prices when the network is more congested.

The more complex the transaction (for example, if you’re exchanging and providing liquidity), the higher the gas fees will be. Plus, if you’re using the Ethereum network to send transactions when this is published, you’ll be well aware of how congested it is due to the massive costs of doing anything on the network.

What is Gwei?

Gwei is a unit of Ether, which stands for gigawei, or 1,000,000,000 Wei. Wei is the smallest unit or the base unit of Ether. Think of Wei as what cents or satoshis are to the US dollar to Bitcoin.

Why are ETH Gas Fees so High?

Supply and demand ultimately determine the cost of Gas. Therefore, if the demand side chooses to get their transactions included in a block sooner, they need to pay a higher price for their transactions per unit of Gas. In the case of an increase in network activity, the demand for transactions increases, leading to a spike in transaction fees.

There are limits to the transaction fees, with only a certain amount of Gas being able to be paid per block. However, the miners can slowly raise these limits and increase the Gas limit by small amounts. It is thought that some of the causes of the rise in fees are the US-dollar-backed stablecoin Tether and the rise in popularity in decentralized exchanges and DApps.

How to Reduce Gas Fees

Below are just some ways that you can help to reduce the Ethereum Gas fees that you pay.

ETH Gas Station

You can certainly save yourself on fees when you edit your gas with the help of Eth Gas Station. When you send transactions from the likes of MetaMask, the gas fee will automatically be prefilled.

Many people use the default gas price from their wallets when they make their transactions, and this is generally okay. However, sometimes it makes sense to pay more if you want the transaction mined quickly or you may want to save some money and offer a cheap gas price, especially if you don’t care how quickly it is mined. 

So, instead of just clicking on the confirm button, it’s worth just putting in an extra step by clicking on edit and advanced first and checking the cost against Eth Gas Station.

With the price of gas at the user’s control, going for cheaper or slower speeds is tempting.  But set the limit too low, and your transaction can not be executed because it runs out of gas. Then you’ll have to resubmit it, costing you more gas fees. While offering a high gas price can speed up confirmation a bit, there is a limit to the acceleration. Therefore, overspending won’t necessarily help you out, either. So it’s important to get the price right.

Eth Gas Station will tell you real-time gas fees and recommend gas fees in GWEI for fast, standard or safe low transactions. As well as the time it’ll take to complete by choosing these different speeds.

ETH Gas Speeds

Safe Low:  This is a gas price intended to be cheap and successful. It may take a bit longer to get a confirmation of this price, but it should be safe to use. The lowest price determines this price, where at least 5% of the network hash power will accept it. It requires that at least 50 transactions have been mined in the last 24 hours at this price. 

Average – This is the price accepted by top miners who account for at least 50% of the blocks mined. This is a safe and prompt transaction. And this is the price that usually reflects the wallet defaults.

Fastest – This is the lowest gas price that is accepted by all top miners (estimated over the last two days). Therefore, all the top pools should accept transactions with this gas price. Paying more than this price is unlikely to help.

They also have other information on their site, such as leaderboards and charts. To be honest, most users will come here to check the gas price and then leave the web page.

So, once you’ve checked your gas fees and chosen the required speed for your transaction, you can then edit this in Metamask, which should, in turn, save you money if you’re willing to accept a slower transaction time (for example).

ETH Gas Tokens

You can use Gas tokens to save yourself on fees when times are congested and prices are high. Gas Tokens can help users save on fees by storing cheap gas in periods of inactivity, using a clever contract trick that refunds gas when freeing storage. The likes of decentralised exchange aggregator 1inch use a gas token called Chi Gas Token.

The idea is similar to the GasToken token concept but has some improvements. Chi is pegged to the Ethereum network’s gas price. When the gas price is low, the Chi price is also low, and the opposite is true. Just like GasToken, Chi is tokenized gas on the Ethereum network. 

The only difference is that Chi is used on 1inch and Curve.fi, while the GasToken is used across the entire Ethereum network. 

Crypto Wallets with Zero Fees

A great way to save on fees is using wallets with zero gas fees. Previously, these wallets included the likes of Digifox and Argent, who were covering gas transaction costs themselves. However, due to increased gas fees, it no longer became feasible to continue with this. 

Argent Wallet

The Argent Wallet does still have a couple of features that are still free, including their Security, such as adding a Guardian or changing your daily limit, and it’s free for their Dai Savings Rate, which is still subsidised by Maker.

Argent is an Ethereum-based mobile wallet where you can store, send, and save; borrow, earn interest, and invest with the ability to enjoy decentralized apps in just a few taps, including Aave, PoolTogether, Compound Finance, and Uniswap.

Dapper ETH Wallet

I believe that the Dapper ETH wallet (available on Google for Androids) also provides a few free transactions per week. Plus, it includes the ability to buy gas “packages”. Although this isn’t a wallet, I’ve personally used it.

The Dapper wallet is an Ethereum smart wallet created by Dapper Labs, the creators of CryptoKitties. Allowing you to send, store, and manage your blockchain-based assets. Dapper Android lets you play your favourite blockchain games through their easy-to-use built-in browser.