Useful Ethereum Gas Fee Tracker On Brave Browser
Cooking On Gas
You may have noticed that there's a big issue at the moment with Ethereum "gas fees" causing a rather large dent in smaller transactions which can get pretty costly! Gas fees are what you need to pay when moving your Ethereum or Ethereum-based tokens around different wallets or swapping tokens on Uniswap or exchanging between different tokens....
Ethereum Fees
Basically, anything you do on Ethereum will be subject to a gas fee. It's inescapable whilst the Proof-of-Work protocol (same as Bitcoin) is in effect although changes are being made and will be rolled out to reduce these fees. "Wei" is what the smallest denominations of Ethereum are called (there are 1e18 of them to 1 ETH) and if you use a wallet like Metamask, it will often ask you what you want to pay in "GWei" (GigaWei - 1e9 wei) to get your transaction on to the Ethereum network.
If you pay more, your transaction will get pushed through faster, pay less and it will take a little longer so depends on if you need the transaction to happen quickly. Beware that if you don't pay a high enough fee, it can get "lost in the ether" so to speak but our British friend, Guy, at CoinBureau does explain it all in great detail with his video here
Ethereum Gas Price Extension
In his video, CoinBureau mentions a really useful extension that you can install in your Brave Browser that allows you to track real time what the current cost of gas fees to allow you to save a little bit on your fees. This is called Ethereum Gas Price Extension and it just sits there in your browser with a little number in blue, telling you what the gas price is in GWei and this is constantly updated so is always moving.
Timing Your Transactions
Over the last 24 hours or so since I've installed the plugin, I've noticed there were peaks and troughs of gas fee price. Around 15:00-20:00 UK time, there was a peak of about 300 GWei transaction fees and then it dropped down to about the levels in the screenshot so it's worth monitoring when the peak times are and perhaps time your transactions in the low tide to reduce your fees when transacting on Ethereum. Definitely keep an eye out so you don't get burned!
Of course, you could always use apps on the HIVE blockchain which don't charge $15-$20 per transaction - amazing what you take for granted sometimes! Anyway, that's enough hot air from me :D
Have you used this browser plug-in? What's your approach when it comes to ETH gas fees? Let me know in the comments below!
Nicky
I'm not a financial advisor and this isn't financial advice. Always speak to a professional financial advisor if you're unsure about how to invest your money
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