Paying low fees in Ethereum - Gas Limit, Gas Price and Gwei

[bitmover]

Some time ago I participated in an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) and they defined the following parameters for Eth contributions:
Maximum Gas Price: 50 Gwei
Gas Limit: 150 000
I made a little research to learn what these attributes means.

Gwei, Wei and Ether are different unit measures of the same thing.
1 Ether = 1.000.000.000.000.000.000 Wei
1 Wei is the smallest unit of Ether, as 1 Satoshi (0.00000001 BTC) is the smallest of Bitcoin.

All computational work of running Smartcontracts or transactions in the Ethereum Network are paid in Ether (Eth), which is the fuel of that network.
Gas is a unit of measuring this computation work, which is usually measured in Gwei.
Some amount of Gas is charged for every computational operation in the Etehreum Network. For example, and addition costs 5 Gas.

Gas Limit and Gas Price attributes define the total cost of your transactions, according to the formula below:

gas limit * gas price

Gas Price: Amount of Gwei you are willing to spend per unit of gas.
Gas Limit: Maximum amount of units of gas you are willing to spend on a transaction.

From my ICO example, if the Gas Price is 50 Gwei and the Gas Limit is 150.000, this transaction will cost 7.500.000 Gwei (or 0.0075 Eth).

To determine what is the gas price, just check out this website
https://ethgasstation.info/

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[seo-maestro]

0.1 gwei is working fine for me when ETH networks is not busy

[rost1989]

0.1 gwei is working fine for me when ETH networks is not busy

Are you sure about 0.1 gwei???  I think that MEW has minimum of 1 and maximum of 100 gwei.
And for most of simple transactions (like sending tokens and eth) - 1 gwei will be more than enough.  But you will have to wait more time.

[bitmover]

0.1 gwei is working fine for me when ETH networks is not busy

Are you sure about 0.1 gwei???  I think that MEW has minimum of 1 and maximum of 100 gwei.
And for most of simple transactions (like sending tokens and eth) - 1 gwei will be more than enough.  But you will have to wait more time.

Fees are pretty low now, about 0.05 usd now. Just made a few transfers..

[Thirdspace]

thank you for brief and clear explanations, now I understand a bit more about ETH
so 'Gas Price' is similar to bitcoin transaction fee rate? (1sat/vbyte)
the difference is on Bitcoin Network, whatever transaction fee we set it will be fully spent  
while on Ethereum Network, we set 'Gas Price' and we will only be charged with current 'Gas Price' set by miners
and the possibility of losing all transaction fee if we set 'Gas Price' lower than minimum

since each block (I assume) has different minimum 'Gas Price' set by miners,
is there some sort of waiting time (TTL) for a transaction before losing the fee completely due to insufficient fee?
I think I misunderstood something (made mistake) on the 'Gas Price' and 'Gas Limit' thingy

[petronus]

I found the problem at the gas limit for token delivery. what is the recommended standard gas limit for token delivery? whether 100000 or 200000. thanks

[bitmover]

I found the problem at the gas limit for token delivery. what is the recommended standard gas limit for token delivery? whether 100000 or 200000. thanks

It's 200000

Token delivery consumes more gas than a simple eth transfer

[Crypto Girl]

Nice explanation tho and it does make sense after all.

However, when using in MEW the gas limit is automatically adjusted, depending on the quantity of the token and so I think we don't need to adjust the gas price unless you really want a faster confirmation. Most likely $0.08 or 0.00042eth in transferring 1.5eth.

[Adriano2010]

I think is possible to pay low fees when sending ERC20 tokens, but as i tested not all ERC20 tokens works in that way, some of them has too high gas price in my opinion, because they not value so much in fiat. I tried for some ERC20 tokens with low gas fee and i get every time "out of gas". And what i not like is that the ETH is lost if " out of gas" occures, is not like on bitcoin where if miner fee was too low and bitcoins transaction got dropped after some time, all coins are returned to sender.

[bitmover]

I think is possible to pay low fees when sending ERC20 tokens, but as i tested not all ERC20 tokens works in that way, some of them has too high gas price in my opinion, because they not value so much in fiat.

You define the gas price. Those ERC-20 tokens you are talking about probably have a high Gas Limit.

You should always use the recommended gas limit, there is no problem if you put too much Gas , because you will be refunded if you send too much gas.

 Gas Price is the atribute you can reduce, and that is what is going to control the fees of the transaction.

[bitmover]

Bump, to all newbies who have doubts about gas and ethereum fees.

[yazher]

Thanks for letting me translate this topic of yours, my fellow countrymen really appreciate it. here's the link on my translation: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5135891.0

[RapTarX]

I had no idea what is Gwei, gas, wei. In fact, I never used Ethereum till now. Recently I had created an address for participating on some airdrops. Otherwise, probably I would not have heard till now.
Thank you for this.

[jademaxsuy]

It will depend on the coin and the traffic of the ethereum platform or network. If there are higher gas rates being process of course it will be pick first that those request that are lower gas rates.

The best thing about transferring coin is that it is being adjusted already in terms of its gas rates so there could be no problem with that for some exchanges but for some to which the the gas will not be set automatically by the exchanges or online wallets then the user wi going to set it manually and if one user will set it to the minimum level of gas there is a high chance that it will fail or worst it will cost you more in the process.

[erikalui]

ICOs always demand to send the transactions using high fees as sometimes ETH network is slow due to traffic and many times transactions fail or are bounced back despite of adding a normal fee. I usually add 4-8 gwie and my transaction gets confirmed in less than a minute. Gas limit is 100000 if you are sending too many tokens else half the amount would be absolutely fine while sending ETH. Last I paid $0.02 in ETH transactions.

[bustedsynx]

I never send an Ethereum transaction without consulting ETH Gas Station. It shows me when and what time the ETH network usually has less pending transactions. I just wish it shows alerts though. Check it out.  https://ethgasstation.info/

[bitmover]

I never send an Ethereum transaction without consulting ETH Gas Station. It shows me when and what time the ETH network usually has less pending transactions. I just wish it shows alerts though. Check it out.  https://ethgasstation.info/

You are right, this is a very good website. Just added to the op

Thanks for reminding me

[okala]

Sending erc20 tokens from wallet to exchange consume more gas then sending ethereuem to exchange why the difference after all the both gas are paid using ethereuem and not the token. I love using low gas amount in sending ethereuem because it will only take little extra time to deliver since the network is not busy.

[crairezx20]

There is also an alternative for ethergasstation I would like to add it here if ever you need to for gas fee calculation.

here https://www.etherchain.org/tools/gasPriceOracle

[bitmover]

Sending erc20 tokens from wallet to exchange consume more gas then sending ethereuem to exchange why the difference after all the both gas are paid using ethereuem and not the token.

Because send ethereum consumes a different processing power than sending tokens.

https://metamask.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360015489411-How-Much-Ether-You-Need-To-Send-Tokens
A standard Ether transfer TX will be 21000 gas & a gas price of 8 GWEI.
With tokens, the amount of gas is typically 200000 gas