The gas fee shown in your wallet probably is not caused by a congested network. It is more likely that the contract you are interacting with is too "heavy." Even if the chain is empty, a complex contract can cost several times more gas than a normal transfer.
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What you need to know
Understand how contract complexity affects gas fees, and judge whether the high fee you see comes from network congestion or from the contract itself consuming a lot of gas.
Breakdown of the concept
Total fee = gas used × the unit gas price (Gwei).
Network congestion affects the second part (the unit gas price), while contract complexity affects the first part (gas used). In the EVM, every opcode has a fixed gas cost. Addition and multiplication cost 3-5 gas. Reading blockchain state with SLOAD costs 800 gas, and writing with SSTORE can cost as much as 20,000 gas. A normal ETH transfer only needs 21,000 gas. A Uniswap swap needs 100,000-180,000 gas, and NFT minting often needs 150,000-300,000 gas or more.
Even if the unit gas price drops to a historical low of 2-5 Gwei, the total fee for a complex contract is still much higher than for a simple transfer.
Comparison table
| Operation type | Typical gas used | Compared with ETH transfers |
|---|---|---|
| Normal ETH transfer | 21,000 Gas | 1x |
| ERC-20 token transfer | 45,000-65,000 Gas | 2-3x |
| Uniswap simple swap | 100,000-180,000 Gas | 5-9x |
| Complex multi-route swap | 250,000 Gas+ | 12x+ |
| NFT minting | 150,000-300,000+ Gas | 7-14x+ |
(Source: combined MEXC blog and other platform data, 2026)
High risk warning: Do not manually lower the gas limit for contract interactions just to "save money." If you lower it manually, the transaction can run out of gas and fail. A failed transaction still charges gas fees and does not refund them. The wallet's automatic estimate is a reasonable value after simulation, not a random number.
Common reasons for failure
"I deliberately waited until early morning when gas prices were lowest, but the fee was still higher than expected."
That is because you saved on the unit gas price (from 50 Gwei to 5 Gwei), but the gas used is decided by the contract itself and has nothing to do with network congestion. An NFT mint that needs 300,000 gas still costs 1.5M Gwei ≈ 0.0015 ETH even if the gas price is only 5 Gwei, which is several dollars. At the same moment, an ETH transfer only costs 0.000105 ETH, a difference of 14 times.
What to do
Case A: If you want to save money, first look at contract complexity
- Before transacting, go to a block explorer and find recent successful transactions for the same contract address. Check the Gas Used value. Budget based on that number, and do not expect fees based on an ETH transfer standard.
- If the transaction is not time-sensitive, wait until the gas price is lower. The contract's gas usage will stay the same, but the unit price drops, so the total fee will go down.
Case B: The wallet shows an unusually high Gas Limit
- If the wallet shows a Gas Limit much higher than similar transactions (for example, others use 300,000 but your wallet shows 500,000), the contract state may have changed (for example, your address triggered extra storage writes), or the wallet simulation may be off. Refresh the wallet and try again.
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Verification and wrap-up
After the transaction is confirmed, check the transaction hash on a block explorer:
- Look at Gas Used. If it is far above 21,000, the high fee comes from contract complexity, not from the network.
- Look at Gas Price. If it is only single digits in Gwei, the network is not congested. The high fee is entirely on the contract side.
