The NFT Ecosystem

Gas is a virtual unit present in Ethereum to organize the payment of transaction fees. By extension, the same concept is used in many smart contract platforms.

If you have ever made a transfer on Ethereum, you may have noticed the presence of parameters to modify such as the gas limit (gas limit) or the gas price (gas price), without understanding what was the link with the fees paid in ether (ETH).

This video explains everything about how the gas system works.

Gas: Performing Operations on the Ethereum Network As you may know, Ethereum is like a decentralized global computer for running programs called smart contracts. It is based on a virtual machine, called Ethereum Virtual Machine or EVM, which operates simultaneously on each of the nodes of a peer-to-peer network. Thus, each of the computers connected to the Ethereum network performs all the operations processed by the system. Operations are included in transactions. In order to prevent denial of service attacks, these operations require a fee, which is paid through the gas system.

What is the gas cost? (gas cost) Gas is a unit in Ethereum that acts as an intermediary between the user who makes a transaction and the validator (miner) who confirms this transaction. The gas is entirely virtual and no one can hold or trade it: the user pays the fee in ether (ETH) and the validator also collects this fee in ether. The gas is “purchased” (in ethers) at the time of the validation of the transaction, then it is “consumed” as fuel for the virtual machine. The validator that includes the transaction in its block collects the ether used to purchase the gas. Every operation in Ethereum has a fixed gas cost. This is calculated based on the computational resource needed relative to other operations.

On the side of the execution of smart contracts, each operation has its own cost.