What Are Gas Fees?

Gas fees on Ethereum are like tips for the people/computers who maintain the integrity of the Ethereum network also known as Validators.

Validators are the rockstars of Ethereum. They play a vital role in the proof-of-stake consensus, validating blocks by re-executing transactions. You could think of their job as double-checker’s who ensure everything is as it should be.

But re-executing transactions isn't free, it requires computational power, which requires computers, which requires energy which of course requires money. Starting to get it?

Gas fee’s provide the financial incentive needed for Validators to get to work.

Why are gas fees variable? Why aren’t they fixed?

Well that’s because with how popular blockchain’s like Ethereum are, there are tons of transactions meaning there needs to be a system to differentiate between transactions and Validators can assign varying degrees of priority.

Insert gas.

Gas is used as a sort of bidding system, where the higher amount of gas paid, the higher priority and better likelihood that transaction gets confirmed sooner.

This becomes particularly important when the network is busy, you might have a really exciting new collection minting which means there will be thousands of wallets ready to get their transaction through so Validators use gas fees to traverse through the many pending transactions.