When you hear NFT Fees, you might think about the percentage you pay on NFTs when you trade. However, there are other “gas fees” in NFT’s trading space. Gas fees come in when the minting or trading of NFTs occurs.
Every user of NFTs would have come across the concept of gas fees. Thus, it is essential to comprehensively understand what gas fees are, which is what this article addresses.
What are NFT Gas Fees?
Gas fees are a form of payment done on any blockchain network to execute transactions on that blockchain. Although gas fees are found in the Ethereum network, they exist on other blockchain networks like Bitcoin, Solana, and Polygon.
Why NFT gas fees are important
The payment of gas fees is indispensable to the functioning of any blockchain network. According to Ethereum, gas fees are “the fuel that allows the network to operate the same way a car needs gasoline to run.”
The minting of NFTs takes vast amounts of energy to complete. Ethereum charges gas fees to compensate miners for the computing power used to verify transactions. Gas fees are like processing fees and come up when a request is made to mint or create an NFT, buy or sell NFTs, and execute a smart contract. Validators get paid the gas fees in the native currency of the blockchain network.
In essence, gas fees are the rewards paid to validators for their work in securing the blockchain network. Additionally, the payment of gas fees ensures that scammers are unable to spam the network with fake transactions since they will be required to pay transaction costs.
Nft Fees – All You Need To Know
Gas fees are denoted in “gwei,” a denomination of ETH. Calculating NFT gas fees depend on factors like network activity and the amount of data to be minted.
Regardless, the primary thing to know when calculating NFT gas fees includes – the base current NFT gas fees, the priority fee, and the units of gas used. The equation goes thus Gas fees = gas units (limit) x (base fee + priority fee).
How to reduce NFT gas fees
For everyone who still wants to continue trading NFTs but the high cost is making you wary, here are some ways you can reduce NFT gas fees
1. Transact when the network demand is low
2. Switch to another blockchain network: For example, Polygon or Solana. Solana’s network accepts lower transaction costs with faster transaction time.
3. Apply lazy minting: You can delay the recording of an NFT on the blockchain. Here, the gas fee is only paid when the purchase of the NFT is accepted and included in the sale price.
4. Set your gas limit
5. Use a sidechain network: Sidechains are separate networks connected to a parent network. They allow for faster or cheaper transactions than the parent Ethereum network.
Looking ahead
To reduce the high rate of gas fees, Ethereum has moved to a proof-of-stake method to verify transactions. With this Merge, we can look forward to faster processing time with less power consumption. Verifying transactions could become saturated, leading to lower transaction fees as more people are now validators.