Steemit Crypto Academy Contest / S1W3 – Blockchain through the concepts by @parkerlee

Hello people, what's good? So yesterday i came across an interesting stuff about the crypto world and soon found out it was inline with the theme of the week which has asked us to define or explain some crypto terms. What I found out was something most are probably familiar with but its kind of new to me in a way though.

Today, I'll be talking about **Gas Fees** and all you need to know about it. The good side and the bad side and why it was there in the first place. I'll also talk a little on how best to optimize it.

In the simplest way possible without much grammar involved, they are just fees paid to miners in order to process a transaction on the blockchain.

Speaking of blockchain, its not just any block chain but the etheruem blockchain precisely. If you dig deep or are already familiar with the etheruem blockchain then you'll know that the etheruem blockchain runs on the 'Proof of work' consensus mechanism which usually involves lots of computational power to process and each computer that process transactions on this blockchain are referred to as nodes.

So in essence, these fees are a way to reward/compensate their nodes for their effort of validating transactions on the blockchain and also keeping the blockchain safe too. Every user who transact on this blockchain must pay these fees.

'Gas Fees' in itself is a denomination of the Ether and is usually measured in 'gwei' ( giga wei) which is 1 billion wei.

Now what's a 'wei'? Well let's just say its the metric system of the etheruem blockchain and every transaction. Just like we measure meat in Kilograms and speed in meters etc. 1 eth is equal to 1 quantillion wei ( 18 zeros).

Well the first and obvious reason will be the incentives or should I say payment. Its used as a payment system to the miners on the blockchain.

Security of the platform. Yeah this may seem absurd but it's true. The fees are high though but this is a way to keep out spammers from the network. In a way miners provides a layer of security to the etheruem blockchain.

It no longer news that the fees paid on the etheruem blockchain are ridiculously high and this tends to keep people off the chain but on a second thought what makes it that way?

Yeah, that's right, supply and demand. Etheruem network is one of the most popular in the crypto world and this means that there'll be more people transacting on the network and the more people there are, the more transactions there'll be so miners will have to choose which transaction to validate first. Most likely they'll choose the one that pays the most so this will make the other users want to pay more so as to get their transactions over the line quicker.

This just follows the general rule of supply and demand. When the demand is higher than the supply, price goes up and vise versa.

Also, bigger transactions will also cost more to process just like a bigger and stronger car will need more petrol to function than a smaller car.

Well let me make something clear, there's no avoiding gas fees on the etheruem blockchain, it just like the way a petrol car needs petrol to function. Nonetheless, there are ways in which you can optimize these fees amd make the most out of the least.

One way to do that is to simply time yourself and transactions properly. Remember when I said the more transactions there are, the more expensive it'll be, well if you can just be patient enough to lool for when there are lesser people on chain then you can get to pay lesser cos the fees will follow the supply and demand rule. Lesser demamd equals to lower prices/fees.

Another way to do that is to take advantage of the layer 2 platform of the etheruem blockchain. These are platforms that can perform independently of the etheruem blockchain but still a part of the blockchain in that it need the etheruem blockchain to validate transactions.

They promote speed lf transactions and also reduce the congestion on the blockchain by actually taking some of the transactions off the chain.

Now that we've seen a little about gas fees, it shouldn't be all that scary again as they usually seem. There are new ways to overcome these expensive fees especially after the fact that you can't just avoid them. Layer 2 platforms offers the best options for this case and will probably help to scale the ethereum blockchain.