Gas fees are the silent gatekeeper of Web3. While the blockchain industry champions financial inclusion and permissionless access, the reality is that transaction costs have historically created a two-tier system: those who can afford to transact on premium chains and those who cannot. The conversation about gas fees is not merely technical — it is a question about who the blockchain revolution is actually for.
The Cost of Participation
At its peak, a simple token swap on Ethereum mainnet cost over $200 in gas fees. Even routine operations — approving a token, claiming an airdrop, minting an NFT — could easily exceed $50. For users in developing economies, where the median daily income may be under $10, these costs rendered Ethereum and similar chains completely inaccessible.
The impact extended beyond individual transactions. DeFi yield farming, once promoted as a way for anyone to earn returns on their capital, became the domain of whales. When gas fees consume 10% or more of a transaction’s value, small depositors earn negative returns. The minimum viable portfolio to profitably interact with Ethereum DeFi protocols reached thousands of dollars — a barrier that excluded the majority of the global population.
This was not a temporary spike but a structural feature. Gas fees are a market mechanism: when demand for block space exceeds supply, prices rise. Networks that attract the most valuable applications — lending, trading, staking — inevitably become the most expensive. Success breeds exclusion.
How Gas Fee Markets Work
Understanding why gas fees behave the way they do requires understanding the underlying market mechanism. Ethereum’s EIP-1559, implemented in 2021, introduced a base fee that adjusts dynamically based on block utilization. When blocks are more than 50% full, the base fee increases. When they are less than 50% full, it decreases. Users can add a priority fee (tip) to incentivize faster inclusion.
This mechanism improved fee predictability but did not reduce costs. During high-demand periods, the base fee escalates exponentially, creating the fee spikes that price out smaller users. The priority fee market adds another layer of competition, where users with larger transactions (and therefore more at stake) outbid others for block inclusion.
Other chains take different approaches. Solana uses a local fee market where fees increase only for the specific state being accessed, so a spike in DEX trading does not affect NFT minting costs. Cosmos chains set fees through governance rather than pure market mechanisms. These designs offer advantages but come with their own trade-offs — Solana’s local fee market can be gamed, and governance-set fees may not respond quickly enough to demand changes.
The Layer 2 Fee Revolution
The most significant improvement in gas fees came from Layer 2 scaling. After EIP-4844 introduced blob transactions, Layer 2 networks saw fee reductions of 90-95%. A token swap on Base or Arbitrum now costs fractions of a cent, making micro-transactions and small-portfolio DeFi interactions economically viable for the first time.
This fee reduction has tangible effects on accessibility. On Base, the number of unique active addresses surged after gas fees dropped below $0.01 per transaction. Applications that were previously uneconomical — social tipping, gaming micro-payments, low-value NFT transfers — became sustainable. The user base broadened beyond crypto-native power users to include casual participants.
However, Layer 2 affordability comes with caveats. Users still need to bridge assets from Layer 1, which incurs gas fees on the more expensive chain. The gas fees for bridging can exceed the cost savings of dozens of Layer 2 transactions, creating an upfront barrier to accessing cheaper execution. On-ramp and off-ramp costs through centralized exchanges add further friction.
The Geographic Dimension
The accessibility impact of gas fees is not uniformly distributed. In North America and Europe, where average incomes are higher and crypto holdings tend to be larger, gas fees represent an inconvenience. In Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America — regions where Web3 has the most potential for financial inclusion — the same gas fees can be prohibitive.
The Axie Infinity phenomenon in the Philippines illustrated both the potential and the limitation. At its peak, thousands of Filipino players earned income through the game, but the gas fees for breeding, battling, and marketplace transactions consumed a significant percentage of earnings. The migration to the Ronin sidechain was driven largely by the need to reduce transaction costs for a user base that could not absorb Ethereum gas fees.
This geographic divide undermines the narrative that Web3 is inherently more inclusive than traditional finance. A remittance from the United States to the Philippines through traditional channels costs approximately $5-10. If the blockchain alternative costs the same or more in gas fees alone, the value proposition evaporates for the users who need it most.
Gas Abstraction and Sponsored Transactions
Emerging solutions aim to remove gas fees from the user experience entirely. Gas abstraction allows applications to pay gas fees on behalf of their users, similar to how web applications absorb server costs rather than charging users per API call.
Account abstraction (ERC-4337) enables this model natively on Ethereum. Smart contract wallets can be configured so that a paymaster contract covers gas fees, funded by the application developer, an advertising model, or a subscription fee. Users interact with the application without holding ETH or understanding gas mechanics at all.
Paymasters are already operational on several Layer 2 networks. zkSync’s native account abstraction allows any smart contract to sponsor gas for its users. Base and other OP Stack chains support ERC-4337 paymasters through infrastructure providers like Pimlico and Stackup.
The implications for accessibility are profound. If users never see gas fees, the mental model shifts from “blockchain transaction” to “application interaction.” The technology becomes invisible — which is precisely when mainstream adoption becomes possible.
The Remaining Barriers
Gas fee reduction and abstraction solve the cost problem but not the complexity problem. Users still need to understand which chain their assets are on, how to bridge between networks, and what gas tokens are required for each chain. Even with abstracted gas fees, the fragmented multi-chain reality introduces cognitive overhead that traditional applications do not have.
Additionally, gas abstraction raises sustainability questions. If applications absorb gas costs, those costs must be recovered through other revenue streams — advertising, premium features, or token economics. Not every application has a business model that supports subsidizing millions of transactions indefinitely.
The most promising long-term solution combines gas abstraction with chain abstraction: a unified interface where users hold a single balance, interact with applications regardless of their deployment chain, and never encounter gas fees, bridge interfaces, or chain selection menus. This vision is technically achievable but requires coordination across infrastructure providers, wallet developers, and application builders.
Key Takeaways
- Gas fees have historically created a two-tier Web3, excluding users with smaller portfolios and users in developing economies
- Layer 2 scaling and EIP-4844 reduced transaction costs by 90-95%, making micro-transactions economically viable
- Gas abstraction through account abstraction (ERC-4337) allows applications to subsidize gas fees, removing cost from the user experience
- The geographic dimension of gas fees undermines Web3’s financial inclusion narrative in the regions that need it most
- True accessibility requires combining gas abstraction with chain abstraction to eliminate both cost and complexity barriers
Gas fees are not just a technical parameter — they are a policy choice about who gets to participate. The tools to make blockchain transactions affordable and invisible to users now exist. The question is whether the industry will prioritize deploying them for the users who need them most, or continue optimizing for the power users who need them least.