What is Gwei? Ethereum gas explained
As Ethereum moves more mainstream, its important to understand a bit more of how it works under the hood. Lets explore tokens, Gwei, and Ethereum!
Put simply. 1 Gwei is 0.000000001 Ether (1 billionth of an Ether) that is used to measure the cost of transactions on the Ethereum network.
What are transaction costs?
Gwei here is a unit of Ether to measure the cost of what is called “gas”. Tokens thought of as “gas” tokens are those that are spent to take action on the network. They are the gas that makes the network function. Lets say you are executing a smart contract on the Ethereum network, that involves a good amount of processing power. You need miners around the world to spend time and electricity validating your contract and its operations. To facilitate this process, you will pay a bit of Ether or “gas” to the miner who mints your transaction into a block. Here you paid a bit extra to get your transaction processed.
Transaction prices for the Ethereum network vary over time as miners join and leave and as the price of Ether moves up and down. Its key to note here that the miners themselves take the price that you pay, incentivizing them to pre-select for transactions that promise a high payment.
