Why is Gas Fee so expensive! What is Gas War? How can I save it?

I believe that friends who have bought NFTs, especially NFTs on the Ethereum chain, must have been frightened by that expensive gas fee. Today, I will share with you why buying an NFT costs such a high fee and what strategies to use to avoid it.

If you are a friend who is going to start buying NFTs, it is recommended to read this article first: Buying and selling NFTs only depends on the price? Be aware of the hidden costs behind it! Find out what it will actually cost to buy an NFT.

The text begins:

What is Gas Fee? to whom?

First of all, Gas Fee is not paid to the project party or original holder who sold NFT to you, nor to a listing platform such as OpenSea, but to the "miners" on the blockchain.

Anyone can be a miner, only you can be a miner if you have the relevant knowledge and equipment (just read the example in the news that college students can also make money by buying a graphics card set mining machine).

To put it simply, the miner's job is to record the data (transactions) on the blockchain, connect it to the chain, and get paid for it, that is, Gas Fee, so Gas Fee is also regarded as a transaction fee.

So why is there Gas War?

The gas fee is not fixed. Whenever there is a transaction on the chain, the transaction will be thrown into the transaction pool (Mempool), and the miner's mining machine will automatically select the more profitable transaction from it. For packaging (the gas fee is higher), the transaction that is packaged first will be completed first.

So this is why gas wars are prone to occur when popular NFT projects go on sale, because everyone will manually increase the Gas Fee, in order to let miners pack their own transactions first, otherwise they will not be able to buy it later, resulting in the current Gas Fee skyrocketed.

It is important to note that if you only prepare the money that is "just right for the NFT price", you will definitely not be able to buy it! (Then how much to prepare will be suggested below)

How to save Gas Fee?

From the perspective of technical novice, the current gas fee gap and saving methods mainly come from these aspects:

1. Watch time period:
   As can be seen from the above example, when there is a large amount of transaction demand in a short period of time, the Gas Fee is easy to soar, so avoiding the hot period is the easiest and most effective way.
   
   At present, in terms of Taiwan time zone, it is usually the cheapest to choose the afternoon and evening hours on weekdays, because people in Europe and the United States are sleeping at this time, and there are fewer transactions on the entire chain (currently, the transaction volume in Europe and the United States still accounts for the bulk). My experience is that you can observe the fluctuation of Gas Fee during the period of 4pm~6pm, and you can usually wait for a good price. (How to observe and how much the price is cheap will be introduced later)
   
   
2. Look at the chain:
   It is cheaper on solana, tezos and other chains, and most of the ether chains are quite high (so it is called the noble chain)
   
   My own experience is that in addition to the price of NFT on the ether chain, it is safer to prepare about 50% more Gas Fee (this is a suggestion for market conditions at the end of January 2022) , if you want to buy a very popular For projects, you can prepare more in your wallet according to the situation, so as not to find out that it is not enough at that time, it will be too late.
   
   If it is an NFT on another chain, such as Solana, Tezos, etc. mentioned above, about 20% is enough. (This is a suggestion for market conditions at the end of January 2022)
   
   
3. See the agreement:
   In the past, the NFT development protocol on the Ethereum chain was ERC-721, which has been used for several years. Recently, some NFTs have been developed using new protocols. For example, the protocol of the recently popular NFT project "Azuki" was developed by itself. ERC-721a can save a lot of gas fees for each Mint (minting) NFT. They also open sourced it for everyone to use a few days ago. I believe that more and more projects will use it. In the future, you can learn more about the projects used. It is also a way to observe the intention of the project party.
   
   
4. See experience:
   It is recommended that you install a Chrome browser extension on your computer: DeFi Saver Gas Prices Extension ( link ). After installation, the current average Gas Fee will be displayed in the upper right corner of the browser at any time, and you will know it after watching it for a long time. About how many figures are considered cheap, and sometimes you will suddenly see cheap prices during popular times.
   
   Personal experience is that below 70 is considered acceptable, but this standard varies from person to person.
   
   

Finally, I would like to say something I often hear, "one day in the currency circle, one year in the world". The above only represents the current situation when I wrote this article. It is recommended that you make more judgments based on the current situation when you read this article, DYOR.

The above is the content of this article to share with you. I very much hope that you will leave a message to interact with me and teach and grow together. If you think this article is helpful to you, please do not hesitate to give me a "star" and "heart"~