Base Fee
The base fee is the protocol-determined minimum fee per unit of gas required for inclusion in an Ethereum block under EIP-1559.
✦ Key Insight
It explains why Ethereum transaction costs change even when a user keeps the same priority tip.
✕ Common Misconceptions
The base fee is only one part of the transaction's fee settings; priority fee and fee caps also matter.
Detailed Explanation
In Practice
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Gas
Gas is a unit or mechanism used on some smart-contract networks to measure and price the computational work required for transactions.
Priority Fee
A priority fee is an additional fee offered to improve a transaction's inclusion priority under a network's fee rules.
Network Fee
A network fee is the amount paid to have a blockchain transaction processed and included according to that network's fee rules.
Gas Fee
A gas fee is the network fee paid for computation and transaction execution on blockchains that use a gas-based fee model.
EIP-1559
EIP-1559 changed Ethereum's transaction-fee market by introducing a variable base fee, fee caps, and priority fees.