@hjq

If you've ever tried to send crypto or mint an NFT only to be shocked by a high fee, you’ve experienced the "gas crunch" firsthand. Here is a breakdown of why these fees exist and the best strategies to minimize them in 2026. 🧵👇 🔵Why do Gas Fees exist? Gas fees serve as: 🔶Compensation for Validators: Whether it's miners (Proof of Work) or stakers (Proof of Stake), the people providing the computing power to verify your transaction need to be paid for their electricity and effort. 🔶Preventing Spam: If transactions were free, a malicious actor might flood the network with billions of tiny "spam" transactions, grinding the entire blockchain to a halt. Gas acts as a "pay-to-do" barrier that makes such attacks prohibitively expensive. 🔶Prioritization: Blockchains have limited space in each "block." When many people want to use the network at once, the gas fee becomes a silent auction. Those willing to pay more get their transactions processed first.

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