Solana Gas Fees (EVERYTHING You Need to Know in 2024)

Launched in March 2020, Solana is a third-generation blockchain attempting to maintain scalability without sacrificing security and decentralization.

Having solved the blockchain trilemma, Solana has managed to cut its gas fees significantly. So far, the platform holds a reputation as one of the most cost-efficient cryptocurrency networks with high performance.

Here's everything you need to know about Solana gas fees, the overall architecture of the network, and how to track gas prices.

Key Takeaways

• Solana shows excellent performance, as it can process 4,000 TPS on average.
• Solana relies on the combination of Proof of History and Proof of Stake mechanisms.
• The three key types of Solana gas fees are transaction fees, prioritization fees, and rent fees.
• Solana gas prices remain some of the lowest across the industry, averaging $0.006 per transaction.

What is Solana?

Solana is an open-source blockchain network providing developers with a plethora of tools and services for building scalable dApps.

Built as a rival to Ethereum, Solana performs excellently by processing around 4,000 transactions per second at negligible fees. Meanwhile, the official website claims that the network can process up to 50,000 TPS with a 400-millisecond block time.

SolanaCompass: The Solana network processes around 4,000 TPS

The platform relies on the combination of Proof of Stake (PoS) and Proof of History (PoH) consensus mechanisms.

• PoS means that network validators verify transactions and are rewarded for their work proportionally to the amount of coins at stake.
• PoH, on the other hand, establishes the transaction order upfront. This enables validators to instantly process transactions as soon as they emerge, instead of waiting for consensus on the order.

As a result, the blockchain has achieved impressive results. According to DappRadar, the network features more than 300 active dApps with a total TVL valued at over $14 billion USD.

What Are Solana Gas Fees?

Users have to pay Solana gas fees when performing activities on the network, whether transferring funds or engaging with complicated smart contracts.

The fees, in turn, can be divided into three key groups:

1. Transaction fees

As Solana validators process transactions, they receive transaction fees as a reward for their work. These fees serve to process the network instructions.

At the time of writing, the base Solana gas fees have a static value of 5k lamports, or 0.000005 SOL.

2. Prioritization Fees

These are optional fees that users can pay to boost the priority of their transactions and thus get them processed faster.

3. Rent

In addition, there is a rent fee that users have to pay for storing the data associated with their accounts on-chain.

As these fees incentivize the efficient usage of storage, they prevent inactive or unused accounts from occupying the network resources.

Similar to Ethereum, Avalanche, and other inflationary protocols, Solana burns a fixed portion (initially 50%) of its fees and sends the rest to validators. This helps to keep the network secure in the short term.

What Are Solana's Gas Prices Today?

The number of users transferring funds over the Solana network keeps growing. Yet, its fees remain some of the lowest across the whole crypto industry.

A while ago, some users on Reddit complained about Solana gas fees being as high as 0.02 SOL (~$5) per transaction. However, it appears the issue they faced was related to high-priority fees or slippage.

A number of services have been created to estimate the current Solana gas prices. Below, we have listed some reliable tools that one may use for this purpose:

1. Solscan: This is a Solana blockchain explorer providing different insights on the network statistics, including average transaction and priority fees.
2. Quicknode: This multi-functional platform for blockchain developers provides information about the Solana priority gas fees.
3. Dune. This is a tracker designed for monitoring the size of priority fees on Solana in real-time.
4. DefiLlama: Famous for its comprehensive visualizations of various blockchain stats, DefiLlama features a separate report on Solana gas fees. This report can be useful when estimating the overall performance of the network.

There may be other tools and services on the web helping users calculate Solana gas prices. Yet, only those mentioned above offer proven data so far. As the network grows, more solutions are likely to emerge.

FAQ

How do Solana gas fees compare with other blockchains?

On average, Solana users pay $0.006 per transaction. According to GasFeesNow, the fees charged by other networks are as follows: $1.9 on Ethereum, $0.02 on BNB, and $0.06 on Avalanche.

Why are Solana gas fees so low?

Solana is capable of maintaining its fees at a low level regardless of network congestion due to its architecture, which relies on the Proof of History consensus mechanism, high block time, and block size.

Does Solana burn fees?

Yes, Solana destroys 50% of the fees to increase the economic value of SOL and improve the network security.