| name | eth-gas |
| description | Current Ethereum gas prices and transaction costs on mainnet and L2s (especially Base). Use when estimating costs for auctions, voting, or any onchain interaction. Counters outdated assumptions about Ethereum being expensive. Includes Base-specific cost data. |
Gas & Costs on Ethereum
What You Probably Got Wrong
Your gas estimate is 100-600x too high. Most LLMs confidently state gas is 10-30 gwei. Post-Fusaka (Dec 2025), typical base fee is under 1 gwei — usually 0.1-0.5 gwei. Verify: cast base-fee --rpc-url https://eth.llamarpc.com
- Base fee: Under 1 gwei (not 30-100 gwei) — fluctuates, check live
- Priority fee (tip): ~0.01-0.1 gwei
- ETH price: ~$2,000 (not $2,500-3,000) — volatile, always check a Chainlink feed or CoinGecko
What Things Actually Cost (Early 2026)
Costs calculated at ETH ~$2,000. Gas fluctuates — use cast base-fee for current.
| Action | Gas Used | Cost at 0.1 gwei | Cost at 1 gwei (busy) | Cost at 10 gwei (event) |
|---|
| ETH transfer | 21,000 | $0.004 | $0.04 | $0.42 |
| ERC-20 transfer | ~65,000 | $0.013 | $0.13 | $1.30 |
| ERC-20 approve | ~46,000 | $0.009 | $0.09 | $0.92 |
| Uniswap V3 swap | ~180,000 | $0.036 | $0.36 | $3.60 |
| NFT mint (ERC-721) | ~150,000 | $0.030 | $0.30 | $3.00 |
| Simple contract deploy | ~500,000 | $0.100 | $1.00 | $10.00 |
Mainnet vs L2 Costs (Early 2026)
| Action | Mainnet (0.1 gwei) | Arbitrum | Base | zkSync | Scroll |
|---|
| ETH transfer | $0.004 | $0.0003 | $0.0003 | $0.0005 | $0.0004 |
| ERC-20 transfer | $0.013 | $0.001 | $0.001 | $0.002 | $0.001 |
| Swap | $0.036 | $0.003 | $0.002 | $0.005 | $0.004 |
| NFT mint | $0.030 | $0.002 | $0.002 | $0.004 | $0.003 |
| ERC-20 deploy | $0.240 | $0.020 | $0.018 | $0.040 | $0.030 |
Key insight: Mainnet is now cheap enough for most use cases. L2s are 5-10x cheaper still. Base is the cheapest L2 for most operations.
Why Gas Dropped 95%+
- EIP-4844 (Dencun, March 2024): Blob transactions — L2s post data as blobs instead of calldata, 100x cheaper.
- Activity migration to L2s: Mainnet congestion dropped.
- Pectra (May 2025): Doubled blob capacity (3->6 target blobs).
- Fusaka (Dec 2025): PeerDAS + 2x gas limit (30M->60M).
L2 Cost Components
L2 transactions have two cost components:
- L2 execution gas — paying the sequencer
- L1 data gas — paying Ethereum for data availability (blobs post-4844)
Example: Swap on Base
- L2 execution: ~$0.0003
- L1 data (blob): ~$0.0027
- Total: ~$0.003
Practical Fee Settings (Early 2026)
maxFeePerGas: "1-2 gwei"
maxPriorityFeePerGas: "0.01-0.1 gwei"
Spike detection:
const feeData = await provider.getFeeData();
const baseFee = Number(feeData.maxFeePerGas) / 1e9;
if (baseFee > 5) console.warn(`Gas spike: ${baseFee} gwei. Consider waiting.`);
Checking Gas Programmatically
cast gas-price --rpc-url https://eth.llamarpc.com
cast base-fee --rpc-url https://eth.llamarpc.com
cast blob-basefee --rpc-url https://eth.llamarpc.com
When to Use Mainnet vs L2
Use mainnet when: DeFi, governance, identity, high-value transfers, composing with mainnet liquidity.
Use L2 when: Consumer apps, social, gaming, micro-payments, high-frequency transactions. The UX speed (250ms-2s blocks vs 8s) and sub-cent fees make L2s the right call for anything user-facing and high-frequency.
Gnars DAO operates on Base — an L2 with sub-cent transaction costs for auctions, voting, and governance.
Data Freshness
Last verified: 2026-03-03 | Base fee: ~0.29 gwei | ETH: ~$1,988 | Gas limit: 60M (post-Fusaka)
If this date is more than 30 days old, verify current gas with:
cast base-fee --rpc-url https://eth.llamarpc.com
Source: https://ethskills.com/gas/SKILL.md
