Can I save money on transaction fees?
I have to pay a lot in gas fees to do anything with my Ethereum. Is there a way I can save money on the gas fees?
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1000% yes! You can almost always save at least 50% or more on transaction fees by setting your own gas prices. Almost no one knows how to do this, but once you learn, it's super easy. All you have to do is use MetaMask to set the gas price to be whatever the amount you are willing to pay and it will wait to execute the transaction until the gas price hits the price you set.
How to change the gas price
Let's say you're buying an Addy on OpenSea. When you hit the button to place a bid, MetaMask opens to a screen like this:
To change your gas fees, you'll have to click on the EDIT button. You'll see a few options that look like this:
The box you'll want to actually change is the "Max fee (GWEI)" option. By default, it displays the current price of gas. However, you can change that to whatever price you are willing to pay for gas, and the transaction will eventually go through once the price of gas falls to that level.
As of April 2022, I'd usually recommend setting the gas price between 20 and 40 gwei for transactions that don’t need to go through immediately, and that you are willing to wait up to ~24 hours to complete. If you set your gas fee this low, it will probably show the following message:
Don’t worry about this! It is just saying that it won’t go through with this gas price right now, because the network is currently busy (which means gas is high). When the network congestion slows down, the gas price will also lower, and when it falls to the same price as you set, the transaction will execute.
Once you do this, you will see the pending transaction in your MetaMask wallet history (Please note that when there is a pending transaction, unless you cancel your transaction, you can’t make another transaction):
As you can see, there is an option to “Speed Up” the transaction, so in case the network keeps being congested much longer than expected and you can’t make the transaction by the time you want to, you can always speed up the process by pressing Speed Up and set a new gas price. Because you can always speed up transactions later, it’s always worth setting the gas price low at first and then speed it up later if needed.
Here's a quick video of the full flow. just to show you how easy it is to change your gas in MetaMask!
If you want to learn more about Ethereum gas fees, you can check out this article by our CEO Mai!
Thanks for the awesome answer Nate!! Just adding one awesome point mentioned by Jaime Ortega - be sure to be careful when you change your own gas prices!
If the transaction you're trying to execute is time sensitive - for instance, if you're trying to mint a new in demand NFT project or trying to buy an NFT off a secondary marketplace like OpenSea and trades are happening quickly for the NFT collection you're buying, you probably shouldn't try to set your gas prices lower than the going rate - in all likelihood, that just means that by the time your transaction goes through hours later, the project will have already minted out or someone else will have bought the NFT you were trying to buy, and your transaction will not only just fail to complete, but also still consume gas and cost you money for the gas consumed!
So be sure to only lower gas prices for non-time sensitive transactions that you're confident will still succeed when it goes through at a later time. Almost all transactions are not urgently time sensitive - for example, sending Ether from one address to another, or transferring an NFT from one address or another, or staking your crypto or NFTs, or depositing or withdrawing your funds to and from DeFi protocols, exchanges, yield farms, liquidity pools, and so forth, so saving money by lowering gas prices is ideal for these kinds of transactions.
For time sensitive transactions like very hyped mints that will likely sell out very quickly, you actually probably want to increase your gas prices far above the current going price of gas to ensure that even if a gas war occurs and gas spikes super high with a lot of people competing to mint, your transaction will still go through.
To do this, just do the opposite of what was suggested above - set your Max Fee to as high as you're willing to pay - say, 1000 or 5000 gwei, depending on how much you're willing to shell out for the transaction in question to go through no matter what and how much competition you think there will be, and your priority fee to something high as well, say 100-1000.
Keep in mind that you won't necessarily pay the max fee you set - that's just as the terminology says, the max fee. You will, however, always pay the priority fee you set - that's the 'tip', so to speak, that you promise to the miner who includes your transaction in a given blockchain block for doing so, whereas the rest of the max fee besides the priority fee that you specify is just the base going fee for gas that is determined by the network itself and burned. If the going base fee for gas is lower than the max fee you set, you'll only pay the going base fee + priority fee for your transaction - so feel free to set the max fee ultra high without worrying that you're going to unnecessarily waste money on gas - you'll only pay exactly what was needed in order to get your transaction through at the point in time when it goes through!
Here's a tip to save on gas if you are buying an NFT from a marketplace, like Opensea. Sometimes marketplace NFT prices are close to, or actually better than mint prices. So if you make an offer in WETH (wrapped ETH). This way, the person who accepts the offer pays the transaction fee. I typically discount floor prices by 15-20%, unless I want a token quickly. For instance, if I want to buy another Curious Addy's NFT, I may swap my ETH to wETH in my wallet (enough to cover the cost of one Addy's NFT) and make offers on 5-10 Addy's pieces that are already on sale, and some not even on sale. As soon as one person accepts it, they get my wETH, pay the gas for the transaction and their NFT gets transferred to me; plus, all the other remaining offers that I placed get cancelled for me. It's a great way to collect tokens from your favourite projects, save ETH, save on gas, and allow sellers who want liquidity to see offers and accept them of their own free will. Try it!
Yes, there are. If you're looking to buy Multiple NFTs just follow the below steps
Step1: Go to Genie.xyz
Step2: Search Collections by using the search bar or you can pick trending collections nft. If you're looking nft community is there.
Step 3: Connect your wallet (Currently, genie is supporting MetaMask, Coinbase, Mobile wallet)
Step4: Once you choose your NFT Collection add it to bag
Step 5: Complete the transaction by paying
Step 6: Sit tight and sip Juice. And, check your wallet after sometime. You saved 40% of gas fees nearly.
Here's another helpful guide that I use related to the timing in which I choose to purchase NFTs using ETH. It's in EDT/EST, so simply convert it to your time zone. Hope this helps!
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Thanks Nate! Super helpful answer - I think I've got it figured out now :)