How Much are Solana Gas Fees?
Gas fees (transaction fees) serve a critical role in blockchain networks. They are what end users and developers pay to validators to process their transactions.
Most importantly, gas fees serve as an incentive for validators to verify blocks and secure the network. Without them, they wouldn't have a real motivation to validate transactions, significantly decreasing blockchains' security.
Gas fees on Solana's network are no exception, allowing Solana to prioritise speed and scalability to offer low transaction costs for users.
This article takes a deep dive into Solana gas fees, touching on the following key topics:
How gas fees work on Solana
How much are Solana gas fees?
The advantages of low gas fees for Solana users
Potential challenges and considerations related to Solana gas fees
How Do Solana Gas Fees Work?
Serving as an incentive to secure the network, Solana gas fees are paid to validators by users to process and confirm their transactions. Introducing a real cost to transactions also enables the blockchain to reduce spam within the ecosystem and provide long-term economic stability.
In the Solana network, users pay the following gas fees:
Transaction fees: Transaction fees refer to the base fee of 5,000 lamports—0.000005 SOL (worth $0.00065 at the current SOL price of $130)—per signature users pay to validators to process their transfers. 50% of these fees are burned to provide SOL with positive supply-demand dynamics and the remaining 50% is paid to validators.
Prioritisation fees: On top of the base transaction fee, users can optionally pay prioritisation (or priority) fees to boost how a transfer is prioritised against others. This incentivises validators to process them over others, resulting in faster execution times.
Like in most blockchain ecosystems, gas fees on Solana can vary based on network activity, the blockchain's scalability, and the transactions' complexity.
With the Tower BFT consensus mechanism and the Proof-of-History (PoH) cryptographic clock, Solana can achieve high scalability with a 65,000 maximum transactions per second (TPS) throughput and 0.4-second block times. As a result, Solana gas fees remain inexpensive.
How Much Are Solana Gas Fees?
The median Solana gas fee is 0.000005 SOL, which equals $0.0013 USD. This is the sum of the median priority fee of 0.000005 SOL combined with the 0.000005 SOL base transaction fee. These numbers are as of September 2024.
Solana gas fees can vary based on the complexity of the transaction. Thus, you can expect the following fees for the following transactions (based on recent blockchain transactions):
Balance transfers: 0.000005 SOL base + 0 SOL priority = 0.000005 SOL SOL ($0.00065)
DeFi swaps: 0.000028 SOL base + 0.000018 SOL priority = 0.000046 SOL ($0.00598)
NFT sales: 0.000051 SOL base + 0.000041 SOL priority = 0.000092 SOL ($0.01196)
In comparison, the median gas fee stands at $0.36 on Ethereum, with users paying $6.12 and $10.35 on average for swaps and NFT sales, respectively. At the same time, the average transaction fee on BNB Chain was $0.1 in the last 24 hours. Typically, users pay $0.02 to transfer BNB, $0.11 to sell NFTs, and $0.06 to swap tokens.
The Benefits of Low Gas Fees on Solana
On the one hand, gas fees incentivise validators to secure the network. However, keeping these costs inexpensive can foster increased user and developer activity on the blockchain.
For example, while Ethereum has the most established history and reputation among Layer 1 blockchains, not everyone is comfortable paying high fees to initiate more complex transactions like swaps, ERC-20 transfers, or NFT mints. Moreover, as the ETH chain is limited in scalability, it can get congested during high network activity, making even simple balance transfers extraordinarily expensive for the average user.
For these reasons, many developers prioritise deploying their decentralised applications (dApps) to high-throughput chains like Solana. This makes their dApps more accessible to the average user and provides their communities with an improved user experience.
Potential Challenges and Considerations
Currently, Solana gas fees are among the most inexpensive in the crypto market. While we don't expect this to change in the near future, some events may occur that could increase transaction costs within the network, such as:
Network congestions: A network congestion occurs when users initiate more transactions than a blockchain's validators can process. As a result, gas fees and confirmation times increase exponentially. Since Solana is a high-throughput blockchain with a maximum TPS of 65,000, there's a great chance that its network won't get congested anytime soon. However, it is a potential challenge for users to be aware of.
Future updates: Future protocol upgrades may decrease or increase the base fee, as well as remove existing fee types (e.g., the priority fee) or introduce new ones.
Trade and Stake Solana (SOL) on VALR
With VALR, you can trade SOL and other SPL tokens like WIF, JUP, and BOME easily. Whether you're looking to buy, sell, or exchange, VALR offers a seamless trading experience.
Additionally, you can stake your SOL on VALR and earn up to 6% APR, while supporting the network's security. VALR also supports the deposits and withdrawals of stablecoins like USDC and USDT on the Solana network, making it more cost effective to transact.
Start trading or staking today and take advantage of Solana's low gas fees and high scalability!
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
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Solana is a high-performance Layer 1 (L1) blockchain that can scale to up to 65,000 transactions per second (TPS). With a 0.4-second block time, it is also optimised for speed and efficiency.
The Tower BFT consensus mechanism and Proof-of-History (PoH) cryptographic clock ensure inexpensive transactions in the network, fostering increased user and developer activity within Solana's ecosystem.
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With the base transaction fee fixed at 0.000005 SOL and the median priority fee currently standing at 0.000005 SOL, users right now can expect to pay around 0.00001 SOL in Solana gas fees ($0.0013 USD).
Risk Disclosure
Trading or investing in crypto assets is risky and may result in the loss of capital as the value may fluctuate.
VALR (Pty) Ltd is a licensed financial services provider (FSP #53308).
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article are the personal views of the author and should not form the basis for making investment decisions, nor be construed as a recommendation or advice to engage in investment transactions.
