What is gas fee on Ethereum?

Gas fee is a fee required to successfully process a transaction or execute a contract on Ethereum blockchain network. The purpose of the gas fee is to compensate network validators for securing the blockchain and network, and without it, there would be little incentive for validators to participate.

The exact price of gas is decided by supply, demand, and network capacity at the moment of the transaction. Ethereum uses a metric system of denominated units called “wei”, where 1 ETH is equal to 1 quintillion wei (a number with 18 zeros after it). One of the most common wei denominations is gigawei (gwei), or 1 billion wei, that is used to represent gas prices.