The protocol-set portion of a transaction fee that adjusts with congestion and is burned rather than paid to block producers.
Modern fee markets set a base fee per unit of gas that rises when blocks are fuller than target and falls when they are emptier. It is destroyed on payment, so it does not reward producers for creating congestion.
Because the adjustment is mechanical and capped per block, fees move in a predictable staircase rather than by blind auction. You can estimate the next block's base fee from the current one.
Example: with a target of 15m gas and blocks running at 30m, the base fee can rise up to 12.5% per block. From 20 gwei that is about 36 gwei after four full blocks, roughly a minute. Waiting through a quiet stretch often halves your cost on a non-urgent transaction.
Original diagrams for the ideas on this page. Illustrative, not real market data.
Risk and reward on one trade. One trade on a price scale: the entry sits 2.00 points above the stop and 6.00 points below the target, so the shaded reward band is three times the risk band. The ratio compares what is lost if the stop is hit with what is gained if the target is reached.
Educational only, not advice. Spotted an error? Post in Site Feedback.