Chapter 6

Gas and Fees

Gas measures computation, not dollars. You pay for the work your transaction asks the network to perform, and after EIP-1559 that payment is split into protocol-controlled and user-controlled pieces.

Think of modern Ethereum fees as a moving floor, a validator incentive, and a personal spending cap.

EIP-1559 fee components

Field	Who sets it	What it does
Base fee	Protocol	Required minimum that gets burned
Priority fee	Sender	Tip that rewards inclusion
Max fee	Sender	Upper bound the wallet is willing to pay

That split made fee estimation more predictable, but it did not make blockspace cheap - it just made the pricing mechanism clearer.

If the base fee rises between signing and inclusion, your transaction still works as long as the total cost stays below your max fee. Any unused room under that cap is not spent.

The deeper lesson is economic: Ethereum sells scarce blockspace in real time. Fee design shapes user experience, validator incentives, and even ETH supply because the base fee is burned rather than paid out.