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Version: 1.0.0

Gas Fees

In ZIGChain a small fee is paid upfront for each transaction. This small fee is commonly known as the Gas Fee.

The Gas Fee is a mechanism that:

  1. Ensures transactions do not consume too many resources.
  2. Prevents spam on the network.
  3. Ensures the network has reliable validators, and they get compensated for their work.

So, users are charged a small amount of $ZIG as a gas fee on every transaction (charged to the sender of the message). The amount of the Gas Fee depends on the Gas Units required to perform the transaction and the Gas Price.

Usually the Gas Fee is expressed in uZIG, which is the smallest unit of ZIGChain.

The topics covered in this document are:

  • Core Components of Gas Fees
  • Paying options
  • Common reasons for failed transactions
  • Paying more fees to go faster?

Core Components of Gas Fees​

  • Gas Units are based on the computational effort or how much work will be required to execute the transaction's code. This is calculated on the server. A metaphor can be the fuel amount that your car uses to take you from one city to another.

  • Gas Limit is the maximum amount of gas a user is willing to spend on a transaction, set when creating the transaction in their wallet. It is normally set to auto, adjusting to match the required Gas Units.Think of it as setting a maximum fuel budget that you are willing to spend to go from one city to another.

  • Gas Price is the cost per unit of gas, determined by the network traffic and demand in each block. Similar to the price of fuel per litre.

  • Gas Fee Is what the user pays, which is

Gas Fee = round_up(Gas Limit * Gas Price)

Following the metaphor, the Gas Fee is the Total Cost of fuel you will pay to go from one city to another.

Payment Options​

When creating a transaction, users must set a combination of two parameters:

  1. Gas Price or Gas Fees (one of them).
  2. Gas Limit as the maximum execution gas.

You can set either Gas Price and Gas Limit or Gas Fees and Gas Limit, but not all three simultaneously.

Note: It is common to set a Gas Adjustment Rate to ensure that the Gas Limit is sufficient to execute the transaction. The Gas Adjustment Rate is a factor that multiplies the Gas Limit to ensure successful execution.

It is important to set the fee correctly because the entire Gas Fee provided will be consumed before executing the transaction.

The validator must execute the transaction regardless of the result, meaning the Gas Fee will be consumed in all the following scenarios:

  1. If the transaction is successful, the Gas Fee will be consumed.
  2. If the transaction fails, the Gas Fee will be consumed.
  3. If the transaction fails because the Gas Fee is insufficient, the Gas Fee will be consumed.
  4. If the fee provided is more than required, the remaining Gas Fee will still be consumed.

Common reasons for failed transactions​

There are two cases in which the transaction will fail:

  1. If the Gas Price provided was less than min-gas-prices established by the validators, the transaction could be delayed or failed.
  2. If the Gas Limit is insufficient, the transaction will fail, and any changes will be rolled back without refunding the Gas Fees.

Paying more fees to go faster?​

In ZIGChain, paying a higher Gas Price will not make the transaction faster. The transaction will be executed in the order that it was received.

Theoretically, if your gas is above the minimum-gas-prices of all validators, your transaction may be processed faster since more validators will be willing to include it in their blocks, compared to when it falls below some validators' minimum thresholds.

References​