Gas fees are one of the less enjoyable parts of DeFi, although they play an important role in the whole system and can’t really be avoided. Depending on which network you use, gas fees could be either nominal or crippling, but either way, you still have to pay them.
Wallets like MetaMask usually give you a suggested gas fee, and the majority of the time that will suffice, but there are there are a number of reasons why you might want to manually adjust the gas fee, and that’s what this article is all about.
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The term “gas fees” is basically a euphemism for transaction fees, and originates from the Ethereum network. Even though in many other networks the term “gas” is not officially used, colloquially people still talk about gas fees or just “gas”.
The gas fee is the incentive that you pay a miner or validator to process your transaction. Miners will always process the more lucrative transactions first, and so you need to make a competitive bid. It’s a bit like trying to hail a cab using an app after a gig or big sporting event. If you make a high offer for the journey, all the drivers will want to pick you up, and if you make a low offer, you’ll be standing there all night.
Similarly, if you make a very high gas offer, your transaction will be processed immediately, and if offer well below the market rate, it will remain pending for a very long time.
The MetaMask suggested gas fee is based on site recommendations and network demand, and will usually result in a moderately prompt transaction. However, the suggestion is far from perfect (especially on smaller networks), and network conditions can change fast.
DeFi beginners may be alarmed when their transaction is stuck on “pending”, but there is usually a very simple solution.
Simply open up MetaMask and go to Activity. You should see your transaction at the top, with a Speed Up box available.
Click Speed Up, and it will open a window titled “Speed up transaction”. The thing we want to adjust is the Gas Price, which is given in something called gwei, (a fraction of an ETH). The MetaMask interface was designed for Ethereum, and this terminology is actually not correct in the context of other networks, but the important thing is the new fee will appear at the top once the gwei value is adjusted.
If you used the suggested gas fee, usually only a small increase will be required to get your transaction processed, and unless you’re on Ethereum, you probably won’t mind paying a few cents extra. If you’re on Ethereum (not recommended at all for beginners), then you might want to refer to a resource like ETH Gas.watch and chose the amount carefully. It’s also worth considering the time of day, and various charts online can show you when prices are likely to be lowest.
Once the price is adjusted, click Save and hopefully the “transaction complete” notification will appear shortly.
In the screenshots above we were using the Polygon network, and at current market prices 0.01 Matic is about $0.02. Given how low the fees are, there’s really nothing to be gained by adjusting it to anything lower. If anything, you may want to raise the price pre-transaction to make sure it goes through more quickly.
As we already discussed, gas fees on Ethereum are very high, but non-negligible gas fees aren’t just limited to Ethereum. Even on “cheap” networks such as Avalanche, gas fees can sometimes be several dollars.
If you aren’t in a hurry, why not reduce the fee a little bit and accept waiting a bit longer?
And if you really need to use Ethereum, you could save upwards of $10 by getting stingy with gas.
To adjust the price down, when first making the transaction, click the Edit button in MetaMask.
A window titled “Edit priority” will appear. Simply adjust the price down to whatever you want, and click Save. Usually it’s not worth adjusting it more than a few clicks, because low offers could remain pending for a very long time.
If you found you adjusted it too low, you can simply follow the steps above for increasing the offer while the transaction is pending.
The MetaMask interface isn’t the most user-friendly, but once you’re familiar with adjusting gas fees you’ll be effortlessly saving time or saving money, depending on what’s more valuable to you!
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