Understanding transaction processing speed on Ethereum blockchain
Blockchain is a great environment for future gaming applications, where everything is transparent, efficient and secure. Everybody has full ownership of their digital assets and they carry actual value in trading. In addition, no one can alter or take away their assets without their permission as long as they are in the blockchain.
Having said that, blockchain technology is still at its nascent stage and its limitation might confuse those who are new to blockchain-based applications.
Many of our players came to us with a question:
“Why is transactions on Ethereum Blockchain not instant?”
Basically, on Blockchain, there are miners who maintain blockchain and process transactions. They are paid a fee for doing so, called Gas. As data processing on Ethereum blockchain is not yet fast enough while there are already a lot of applications running on it, some transactions might take quite long to get completed. The transaction speed depends on the fee amount players are willing to pay for it.
What is Gas in detail?
Gas is a unit of measuring the computational work of running transactions on the Ethereum network. Gas can be seen as a fee of each transaction, which will be paid to blockchain miners, who help process your transactions.
- Transaction fee = Gas Limit * Gas Price
Gas Limit is the maximum amount of units of Gas you are willing to spend on a transaction. You will only spend the required amount of Gas to cover the computational resources needed for each transaction, regardless of the Gas Limit you input. Typically, Etheremon will let you know the the Gas Limit required for all transactions in game so you won’t need to worry much about this.
Gas Price is the price per unit of Gas. The higher the Gas Price, the faster your transaction will be executed (mined).
Although gas is a measurable thing, there aren’t any actual cryptocurrencies for gas. You can’t own it. When it comes to actually paying for the gas, the transaction fee charged is in a certain amount of ETH.
Some might wonder “Why is gas not called ETH directly?” There is one thing you should know Gas cost is not affected by ETH price fluctuation. If the price of Ether happens to increase, gas price can correspondingly decrease. As such, there needs to have a different term for it.
How to make transaction faster?
If the gas price you set for your transaction is too low, miners will de-prioritize your transaction. As such, you should set a gas price high enough to incentivize the network miners. Most of time, Metamask already recommends a gas price for you so you won’t need to worry of either having a failed transaction or overpaying for it.
But you can make transaction faster by increasing the Gas price. Check average Gas Price on this website: ETH Gas Station to decide what is a good number.
The explanation of Gas Price and Gas Limit can be intimidating, take a deep breath and let it infuse into you. If you are still not sure, then just follow the recommended Gas Limit and Gas Price in Metamask as it has been optimized for the best experience.
Cheers,
Etheremon Team
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