Mrig P also contributed to this article
When it comes to decentralized applications (dApps), there is one clear blockchain leader: Ethereum.
As the world's first, largest, and most widely used blockchain for DeFi, it hosts thousands of dApps that attract millions of users who conduct billions of dollars worth of daily transactions.
While these transactions differ in size, form, and nature, they all have one thing in common: they require users to pay gas fees. But what are gas fees and why are they necessary?
This article explains what Ethereum gas fees are, why they can be expensive, and how you can pay lower fees.
Ethereum gas fees are the transaction fees users pay on the Ethereum blockchain to conduct transactions and execute smart contracts. Users pay this fee in Ether (ETH), while the network nodes earn a fraction of fees for validating transactions via Ethereum's Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism.
To best understand how gas fees are calculated, we'll first need to clearly define a few terms.