Gas fee
A gas fee is the network fee on Ethereum and similar smart-contract chains, priced per unit of computation ("gas") a transaction consumes. Complex operations cost more gas than simple transfers.
"Gas" measures computational work: a plain token transfer consumes a small, fixed amount, while interacting with complex smart contracts consumes much more. Your total fee is gas used × gas price, with the price set by a fee market that spikes when the network is busy — the reason identical swaps can cost dollars one hour and cents the next.
The term leaks into exchange life at the edges: ERC-20 deposits and withdrawals ride Ethereum gas conditions, which is why exchanges price ETH-network withdrawals higher and reprice them as conditions shift, and why the same asset is often cheaper to move on an alternative network.
Centralized exchange trading itself is gas-free — order matching happens off-chain on the venue's ledger. That is a genuine cost advantage of CEX trading for high-frequency activity: a hundred trades cost a hundred trading fees but zero gas, and with a payback returning 50–67% of those fees, the all-in cost gap versus on-chain trading widens further.
Cutting the fees you can control →