What is gas in the ether? What are GAS and GWEI and why are these data important when transferring Ethereum. What is gas in Ethereum

The day before yesterday an unprecedented event took place in the history of high stakes in recent years. The central website tracker of the results of sky-high limits unexpectedly reopened for public viewing all the previously blocked high roller charts. Whether this was the machinations of tax authorities or an unusual marketing ploy of the portal, we do not know. But now we have graphs of the most rapid rises and furious streaks. For convenience, we have divided the graphs into groups and are ready to present them for your consideration. In the first part you will find brilliant top winners and star sponsors of the high stakes economy.

Demigods

In the first group we included high rollers, whose graphs cast doubt on the earthly origins of these players. These guys were born to win and throughout their careers they didn’t know what it meant to “lose.” Their divine skill, combined with stunning upstrikes, demolished (or is still demolishing) opponents in their path with a nuclear whirlwind.

Nicholas "ragen70" Heinecker

The history of this high roller is covered in rumors and legends. Coming out of nowhere in early 2013, Nick won $7.2 million for a year and a half in all the games that he played, and also disappeared from the arena without a trace in August 2014. Whether it was a unique streak, an incredible skill, or the use of unique programs for Draw games followed by a lifelong ban, we are most likely already we won't find out.

Ben "Ben86" Tollerene

Another player who needs no introduction. Having started conquering Skylimit Everest back in 2010, Ben remains on it to this day. Before the closure of Full Tilt, he completely controlled the PLO HU lobby, but did not disdain other disciplines. Over the course of his career, Big Ben has clicked almost 8 million.

Daniel "jungleman12" Cates

The prince of no-limit heads-up and the king of chat battles began his high roller career on FTP before Black Friday and won 7 million in sweet games then. But after a two-year break, he didn’t lose his form and won another $3.5M. On Pokerstars his results are somewhat more modest – there the plus is “only” 1.2 million. But, despite the “beggarly” schedule of the red spade, Cates continues to prove his competitiveness in practice to this day. $12.5 million in the cache and deserved first place in the subgroup

Alex "Biatchpeople" Luno

Another high stakes resident who needs no introduction. The French skylimit regular specializes in mixed games with an emphasis on limit disciplines and has been competing with our Alexander Kostritsyn for several years now.

Alexander "joiso" Kostritsyn

Our compatriot is rightfully included in the elite list. Alexander’s chart has been creeping straight up for the second decade, and at the tables of 8 games he was and remains one of the most dangerous opponents.

Celebrity Sponsors

In this group we included the most popular players, whose name today is a brand in itself. However, these players, for one reason or another, are not competitive in nosebleeds.

Phil "Polar1zing/RaiseOnce" Ivy

Perhaps the most famous player of all time, rivaled only by Doyle Brunson, he won almost $20 million on Full Tilt before Black Friday, but found himself out of work after the Americans were cut off from the pool. Over the past 5 years, Phil has lost a total of $9 million on virtual felt. True, he has recently given up online sponsorship:

Gus "Gus Hansen" Hansen

Gus Hansen on Full Tilt and broksi on Pokerstars - one of these two nicknames will be familiar to you if you are even slightly interested in high limits. A professional gambler who almost lost $22 million– this is the main nonsense of modern online poker. The main question that still torments viewers is “how much and where do you need to earn in order to lose so much?”:

Jason Mercier

The Pokerstars professional, who nearly bankrupted his “colleague” this summer and almost won 3 bracelets in 1 World Series, is not so formidable at online sky limits. Over the course of 5 years, he played only 87 thousand hands at limits of $50/$100 and higher, but managed to lose more than half a million.

There is a version that in this way Jason is preparing for expensive cash games offline and limit tournaments of the World Series, and against the general background, the losses do not look so bad, but this does not negate Mercier’s membership in the group of star losers.

Daniel "KidPoker" Negreanu

Another superpro, whose appearance at high limits creates an impressive waiting list in seconds. Almost half a million invested in the economy of the employer site and a well-deserved place in our chart:

Stay tuned and soon you will find out how much Truteller and Vorheili won, what seven-digit swings look like and how many millions are in OtB_RedBaron’s account.

In the Ethereum network, unlike Bitcoin, there is not only the cryptocurrency of the same name - ether, but also Gas and Gas Limit. They allow users not only to pay for transactions, but also to launch smart contracts and DApps, as well as store data on the blockchain.

Ethereum platform

The platform of the second cryptocurrency in the world by capitalization, Ethereum, was launched in July 2015 by Vitalik Buterin. The purpose of the platform is to provide developers with an open, distributed network to run their own decentralized applications (DApps) and . While the Bitcoin network plays the role of a peer-to-peer payment system, Ethereum is designed to execute program code using a decentralized virtual machine (EVM).

Ether is an internal cryptocurrency that is mined by miners to keep the network running, and unlike other cryptocurrencies, its role is not limited to just payments. One Ether coin is divided into: Finney, Szabo, Gwei, Mwei, Kwei and Wei, where Wei is the smallest unit of Ether. The developers gave these names to the shares of ether in honor of famous personalities who made a significant contribution to the development of cryptocurrencies. One ETH is equal to a thousand Finney, a million Szabo, a billion Gwei and a quintillion Wei.

Number of Wei units in each lobe

Transactions in Ethereum

For any transaction or action on the Ethereum blockchain, a commission is charged, which the miner receives. The miners of the network confirm transactions and decide which of them will be included in the new block of the network. Transaction fee calculated in gas and paid in ether. From which it turns out that gas is the “fuel” of the Ethereum network, which is used to conduct transactions, execute smart contracts and launch DApps, as well as to pay for data storage.

Gas has two components - limit and price. Thus, the operation of the Ethereum network is ensured by:

Ether (ETH) is a cryptocurrency of the Ethereum network, the second largest in terms of capitalization on the crypto market.

Gas is a unit of calculation that indicates the amount of commission for a specific action or transaction.

Gas Limit- this is the maximum amount of gas that the user is willing to pay for performing this action or confirming a transaction (minimum - 21,000).

Gas Price- this is the amount of Gwei that the user is willing to spend on each unit of gas.

For each transaction, the sender sets a gas limit and price. To independently calculate the total cost of the Ether transaction fee, you need to multiply the gas limit by its price. For example, if the gas limit is 50,000 units and the gas price is 20 Gwei, then this means that the sender is willing to spend 0.001 ether to complete the transaction.

The higher the gas price that the sender is willing to pay, the more priority his transaction in the Ethereum network, since the miner's reward will be higher. This option is suitable for those who are participating in the token pre-sale of a popular ICO and want to increase the chances of their transaction being included in the next block. However, by setting a low gas price, the sender saves his own money, for example, when transferring funds from one wallet to another.

After completing the transaction, all unused gas is returned to the sender's account. But if he specified too low a value for the gas limit, then his transaction is considered invalid and will be rejected due to the “Out of Gas” error, and the gas spent on calculations will not be returned to the account. It is worth keeping in mind that the sender always pays the miners for the calculations, regardless of whether the transaction goes through or not. The process of processing a transaction from the MyEtherWallet wallet will look like this.

Having started using the Ethereum cryptocurrency, having created and purchased a certain number of Ether coins for it, sooner or later each of us has a need to transfer part of our savings to another wallet, for example, to a cryptocurrency exchange, in order to further exchange our Ether for another cryptocurrency or for fiat money (rubles, dollars, euros).

But, as you know, in order to transfer ether to another wallet, you need not only to know the Ethereum address, but also to set the correct commission size for the transaction to be completed successfully. And most importantly, when transferring ether to another Ethereum address, you may encounter a number of unfamiliar terms, such as Gas, Gas Limit and Gas Prize, which are precisely the ones responsible for the commission. So that all these terms do not cause you confusion, in today’s article I will try to explain in as much detail as possible what they are and what their meanings need to be set when making a translation in order for it to be completed successfully. Plus, I’ll give you practical advice that will help you significantly reduce the costs of all kinds of transactions carried out on the Ethereum network.

What is Gas in Ethereum

If we compare Ethereum with the old Bitcoin, in which everyone is accustomed to the ease of transferring bitcoins from one wallet to another, then in a nutshell we can say that in Ethereum the transfer of ether is carried out by and large, although in a similar way, but a little more complicated. The thing is that Bitcoin was created, first of all, in order to transfer money from one wallet to another without any problems. Therefore, in order to successfully transfer funds, a minimum of actions are performed, namely: the recipient’s address and the amount of the commission are indicated, after which the only thing left to do is wait for the transfer to go through. Moreover, if you want the transfer to go through as quickly as possible, it is enough to simply pay more money for the commission, but if you have time to wait, then you can get by with the minimum commission.

Ethereum, on the other hand, is a more functional cryptocurrency, so the size of its commission depends not only on the speed of transactions, but also on the type of operation being carried out. If anyone doesn’t know, the following operations can be performed on the Ethereum network:

1. It goes without saying that you can transfer ether from one wallet to another;
2. Create and execute smart contracts.

Gas or Gas in Ethereum, is precisely the same unit of commission that is used to pay for all of the above operations. It is important to remember that each operation is paid for with a purely individual amount of gas (for a simple one, less gas is spent, for a complex one, more), and its amount is written in a specially designated field called “Gas Limit”, which is available in every translation form. Gas, in turn, also has its own price, measured in ETH. More precisely, the user himself sets the price he is willing to pay for gas, and he can do this in the settings of a particular wallet. In other words, if you want to make a transfer as quickly as possible, then you just take it and pay more for Gas; if time is tight, then you can save money and pay less.

In general, from all of the above, we can conclude that the size of the commission in Ethereum entirely depends on two components, namely, Gas Limit (gas limit) and Gas Price (gas price). Of course, the question immediately arises: what values ​​for certain operations need to be specified in order for the translation to be completed successfully. We’ll deal with this later in the article.

What is Gas Limit

Gas Limit aka Gas Limit— this is the maximum amount of gas that you will allow to be written off for a particular transaction. Why does this maximum need to be specified? In order to ensure that if any error occurs, as they say, “not to end up” with a tidy sum.

Well, in general, when setting the Gas Limit, remember the following rules:

• Never invent anything or write down Gas Limit values ​​to the left. Because if you make a mistake in the quantity, your transaction simply may not be processed, and you will be left with nothing.
  And also remember one important feature of gas in Ethereum, which is as follows. If, for example, when conducting a transaction you set a gas limit of 60,000, but in fact only 30,000 was needed to complete it, then the remaining amount of gas will be returned to your wallet in the form of ETH. Well, if in a similar situation the transaction requires at least one more unit of gas, i.e. 60,001, then in this case the transaction will not be completed and all funds will be burned irrevocably.
• Remember once and for all that in order to successfully transfer ether from one wallet to another, the Gas Limit value will always be equal to 21,000 gas.
• If you take part in ICOs or work with smart contracts, then it would be best to find out the Gas Limit from their developers.

What is Gas Price

As I said earlier, Gas Price is nothing more than the price (currently measured in Gwei) that a particular user will be willing to pay for one unit of Gas.

Knowing that the commission on the Ethereum network consists of two components, namely, such a parameter as the gas limit and the gas price, and is calculated using the formula:

Gas Limit ∗ Gas Price = final commission

It turns out that each user independently has the opportunity to regulate the size of the commission, albeit not always due to the gas limit, but certainly due to the price of gas. And right now I’ll show you with a clear example how it all will look.

I'll take . In this wallet, in order to transfer ether to another wallet, you need to perform the following 4 steps:

1. Log in to your wallet on the page " Transfer ether and tokens»;
2. In the funds transfer form, enter “ Address of the recipient" and "Transfer amount";
3. The column “Gas limit” and “Gas price” will be automatically filled in with standard values ​​- 21,000 gas and 41 Gwei or 0.000000041 ETH for 1 Gas, respectively. Having carried out a simple calculation, namely, multiplying 21000 by 0.00000041, it turns out that in this case you will have to pay a commission in the amount of 0.000861 ETH or $0.43 at the exchange rate as of June 18, 2018.
4. Press the button " Create a transaction» and follow further instructions to confirm and complete the transfer.

Most users of this wallet transfer their ether to other wallets in exactly this way (without particularly understanding and without changing the standard values ​​of “Gas Limit” and “Gas Price”), without even suspecting that the standard prices for Gas, to put it mildly, are robbing them. I’ll immediately explain why. The thing is that standard values ​​are automatically registered so that you can be sure that when carrying out a particular transaction, it will be 100% completed. But, as I said earlier, if it’s not worth experimenting with the size of the gas limit, then it’s very worth it with the price of gas. First of all, in order to reduce the commission for a particular transaction by at least 5-10 times.

Of course, you will have a question about how much to pay for Gas in order to save on the commission, so to speak, and the transaction is guaranteed to be completed. Everything is very simple here, to find out for sure, just use a very useful service - which will show you not only how much you will need to pay for Gas at one time or another, but also how this or that price will affect the speed of the transaction.

But at the same time, do not forget that the cost of Gas in most cases depends on the congestion of the Ethereum network. Simply put, the busier the network is at any given time, the more you will have to pay for gas. Well, on the contrary, if the load is minimal, then it will be possible to get by with minimal gas prices.

In general, to make it easier for you to understand all of the above, I will give an example of working with the service. When you go to its main page, on the right side you can see a sign like this called “Recommended Gas Price”:

In this table, based on current network conditions, you will be offered recommended gas prices. So, for example, if you want your transaction to complete as quickly as possible, i.e. in less than 2 minutes, then you will need to pay 4 Gwei for gas. Well, of course, if you have time to wait for the transfer, say some 5-30 minutes, then you can pay for gas only 2 Gwei, which is 2 times less than a quick transfer, and 20 times less than the standard prices of the MyEtherWallet wallet.

By the way, in the center of the main page of this service, in addition to everything else, there will also be a kind of calculator that will allow you to independently set the price for gas by moving the slider and more accurately find out after what period of time the transaction will be carried out.

Working with this calculator is very simple:

1. In the “Gas Used*” column you need to enter the gas limit (in our case, it is 21000);
2. Use the slider to adjust the gas price (I chose a price equal to 2 Gwei);
3. After all this, in real time in the “Avg Time” column the average time for conducting and confirming a transaction will be calculated equal to 1.29 minutes, and in the next column “95% Time” it will be clarified that in 95% of cases it may take 3 minutes.
4. Also in the “Tx Fee” column the total commission amount (in dollars) for carrying out the operation will be calculated at a gas price of 2 Gwei and a gas limit of 21,000. In our case, it will be equal to only $0.021, which is again 20 times less than that commission , which we would pay if we used the standard gas price settings in the MyEtherWallet wallet.

I think the conclusions here are obvious; it is best to always calculate the price of Gas yourself using the service. Then set it exactly in the settings when making transfers, and under no circumstances leave it as standard:

... After all, this is our common gas,
And only your dreams come true.
© Semyon Slepakov.

Hopefully you've already gained some basic knowledge about the platform and maybe even bought some coins, but if you're going to continue to actively use Ether, be sure to check out this article. I will devote the next several thousand characters to the basic principles of commissions on Ethereum and, as a bonus, I will give some tips that will help reduce the costs of all kinds of transactions.

Let's highlight the main operations that can be performed on Ethereum:

1. Create smart contracts.
2. Execute smart contracts.
3. Transfer airwaves to other addresses.

So we got to the most important thing. In order to perform these transactions on the Ethereum platform, you will need to pay a fee and the unit of payment for any fee is Gas. In simple terms, for any transaction on Ethereum you will have to pay in Gas. Carry out a complex operation - you need more gas, a simple one will need less. In this way, the network ensures that no one performs useless actions or uses inefficient code.

What is Gas Limit?

Gas Limit or Gas Limit is the maximum amount of Gas that can be debited from you when conducting a particular transaction. This was done so that as a result of some error that triggers a large cycle of operations, a large amount will not be written off from you. When setting the Gas limit, it is important to understand several things:

1. You must clearly understand what Gas limit you need to set.
   For example, you set a Gas limit of 100,000, but you needed 50,000 for the operation, in this case the required amount of Gas does not exceed the limit, which means everything is ok - the transaction will be included in the block and will be executed, and the remaining 50,000 Gas will be returned to you to your wallet in the form of ether. But if you needed 105,000 for the operation, then all your 100,000 Gas will be spent, but the transaction will not pass validation and you will be left with nothing. An attempt to carry out an operation will be displayed, but due to insufficient gas, all changes were canceled.
2. Always find out from the developers of smart contracts, when participating in other operations, what Gas limit you should set! I don’t recommend experimenting here!
3. Remember, the standard Gas limit for transferring Ether to another address is 21,000 Gas. That is, if you plan to simply buy and transfer ether to various addresses without contacting smart contracts, then it is important for you to remember Gas Limit 21,000!

What is Gas Price?

So that you do not get confused in these indicators, I will immediately give you the division of ether into various shares.

1 ETH = 1,000 finney = 1,000,000 szabo = 1,000,000,000 gwei =1,000,000,000,000,000,000 wei

By the way, the names of the shares are not accidental; these are the names of people who played a significant role in the development of cryptocurrencies.

So, Gas Price or Gas Price is the price you are willing to pay for one unit of Gas. Everyone determines for themselves what price they are willing to pay for Gas. At the moment, the default Gas Price on Ethereum is 1 Gas = 20 Gwei, which with a standard sending of ether will be 21,000 * 0.00000002 = 0.00042 ETH ($0.19). Agree, in principle the amount is acceptable, but the question arises: is it possible to put less and whether my transaction will be received in this case. To answer this question, let's use one great service:

Don’t be alarmed by the large number of numbers and letters, now only two indicators are important to us:

• Gas Price, which is adjusted with a slider and measured in Gwei
• Gas Used - the amount of Gas required to complete the operation.

Setting the price of Gas at 1 Gwei, which is 20 times less than the standard size, we see that the approximate execution time for the transfer is 4 blocks, and at the moment the time a block is on the network is about 20 seconds. I think you already guessed what this means. This means that by paying a commission 20 times less ($0.0095), we can expect the transaction to be confirmed in just over a minute!

Of course, this is not accurate data and it will change periodically, but I sincerely don’t understand why pay 20-60 Gwei for Gas, of which there are a lot on the network.

To summarize today's conversation, I really hope that you understand what Gas is and how to use it correctly. I also wish you to be careful about any kind of commissions, because the money saved is the same profit that you can add to your asset.

Learn, think clearly and read BITSTAT!

Do you want to make money on crypto? Subscribe to ours!

“There was not enough gas to complete the transaction! What does it mean? What should I do?” - such questions are often asked by Ethereum users. And indeed: Gas, Gwei, contracts - why complicate everything so much? Last time . Now the task is more difficult, let's go!

1 ETH = 1000000000000000000 wei = 1000000000 gwei (shannon) = 1000000 szabo = 1000 finney

Usually, new Ethereum users are bombarded when they first encounter the concept of gas. In Bitcoin, you set the commission amount and wait for the transfer to go through. A small commission means you wait a long time, a large commission means less. Bitcoin was created as a cryptocurrency in order to transfer money between people. The main difference between Ethereum and Bitcoin is the presence of a decentralized virtual machine (EVM). It allows you to run any program/smart contract (usually in the Solidity programming language) if you have enough time and memory (). was created not as a currency for transfers, but as a platform for running applications (with payment in the same Ethers - ETH).

When a transaction is included in a block, the required code is executed (if it is a request to a smart contract), and the amount of gas consumed by the contract is transferred to Ether and debited from you as a reward to the miner.

The gas limit serves as a specific limit on transaction fees. If you set a limit of 1,000,000 gas, and the smart contract only needs 50,000 gas, then you will only pay 50,000. The limit is made in order to protect the user and he does not spend more money than he can afford (let's say the contract could start an infinite loop and the user would be in trouble). By the way, if the contract needs 1,000,005 gas to complete a transaction, then, alas, the gas will be spent, and the program will not complete and will not produce a result. Typically, developers themselves indicate how much gas is needed to execute their smart contract.

— HOW MUCH DOES GAS COST?
— The user himself sets the price in ETH for gas!

In MyEtherWallet there is a slider in the upper right corner and the gas price can be selected in the range from 1 to 60 Gwei = from 0.000000001 to 0.00000006 ETH.

Transferring ETH from one wallet to another

Transferring ETH costs 21,000 gas.
If you set a price of 1 gas = 20 Gwei you will pay the following transfer fee:
21000 × 0.00000002 = 0.00042 ETH ($0.12)

Why pay more? Ethereum has a transaction pool. A beautiful picture from MyEtherWallet describes the transaction process:

Depending on how quickly you want the transaction to go through, you choose the gas price. There is an excellent service ETH Gas Station, which allows you to choose the optimal price for gasoline.

If you set the price 1 gas = 0.1 Gwei, the service promises that the transaction will take place in 22 blocks. If 12 Gwei or more - 2 blocks. Don’t forget that the time a block spends on the Ethereum network is now 15 seconds, which means that with the smallest commission of 0.1 Gwei, your transaction should go through in just 5 minutes!

Why users pay 50 Gwei for gas is completely unclear, but there are many of them (). By the way, the ETH Gas Station has a sign at the bottom right with various data for the last 2,500 blocks. Currently, the record holder paid $5339.94 for the transfer because he set the gas limit to 200,000 and the gas price, probably by accident, to 200,000 Gwei (0.0002 ETH). The transaction spent 92,068 gas. Here it is in Etherscan.

The record holder in 2016 paid a commission of 761 ETH for 1 transaction (although Ether then cost significantly less, in total, just over $6,000).

Is it possible not to pay at all?

For Ethereum, the maximum block size is measured not in bytes, like Bitcoin, but in the amount of gas. Currently, one block can contain transactions worth ±6,700,000 gas. In fact, very often the blocks are not filled:

• The left column, highlighted in red, is the number of transactions in the block.
• On the right, there is an exclamation mark next to a block that is only 1% full.

The transaction queue is small. We did some research and found that currently transactions with a price of 1 gas = 1 wei are processed.

With a gas price of 1 wei, regardless of the amount of gas required for your transaction (remember, with a simple transfer this is 21,000 gas), the commission will be negligible!

By the way, with the gas price = 0 wei, alas, the transaction does not go through...

How to use it?

When transferring, you indicate:

• Recipient's address - everything is clear here
• Gas limit is 21,000 for ETH transfer. In the case of sending to a smart contract, for example when participating in an ICO, the developer always indicates this value; it is better not to experiment.
• You have the right to choose the price of a unit of gas yourself (at the moment, even at 1 wei everything works), the higher it is, the faster the transaction will go through.

In the official Ethereum wallet, the commission rate is terrible. You can move the slider, and the minimum gas price will be 1 Gwei. In MyEtherWallet the minimum is also 1 Gwei.

How to cheat the system and reduce the gas price in MyEtherWallet?

Method 1:

The editors of the site would like to thank Slava Karpenko for her assistance in preparing this article.

P.P.S.

We promised that Ether would get it too. Promises must be kept.

We look at the latest blocks on the network: https://etherscan.io/blocks
Let's take 10 blocks, say from 4,391,616 to 4,391,625 (by the way, there are quite a lot of transactions in them, compared to other samples).
Number of transactions: 681
Miner reward: 30.7 ETH ($9,400)
1 transaction cost almost $14.