Exciting news! As part of a major step forward for its multichain support, Blocknative’s Gas Network is now expanding to Solana. As of today, developers can access real-time fee data for the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) through our Gas API and Gas Extension.
With Solana support, builders can expect the same accuracy and developer experience that Gas Network provides across Ethereum, Bitcoin, Avalanche, SEI, and other chains.
Gas in Ethereum and other EVM environments is relatively straightforward: each transaction specifies a gas limit and a price per unit, and users pay only for the gas consumed. The introduction of base fees, priority tips, and blob fees adds complexity to the EVM model. But at its core, it is a single-threaded, sequential execution environment. Transactions are generally ordered by price.
Solana takes a fundamentally different approach to gas. Transactions are executed in parallel across multiple cores. To avoid conflicts, the network groups transactions into “buckets” based on the accounts (or storage slots) they touch. If two transactions contend for the same account—say, a popular trading pair—they must be processed serially in the same bucket. Others can be processed in parallel across other buckets. This parallelism drives Solana’s speed, but it also makes fee estimation more complex.
Instead of paying only for compute used, Solana fees are based on the compute unit limit you set in advance. Users pay the priority fee multiplied by this limit, regardless of how many compute units are actually consumed. Overestimating means overspending. Underestimating risks failure. Add to this a fixed base fee—currently 5,000 lamports per transaction signature—and you have a system that feels very different from Ethereum’s model.
This system has benefits. It reduces spam and ensures validators are compensated even for failed transactions. But it also introduces challenges for wallets, developers, and end users who want predictable transaction success without wasting fees.
Our Gas API for Solana analyzes recent blocks—typically 25 or more, representing ~10 seconds of activity given Solana’s 400ms block time—to produce a fee distribution. We aggregate observed priority fees and surface guidance on inclusion thresholds: for example, the fee level that included 90% of recent transactions.
This data allows developers and wallets to set fees more intelligently. In low-contention cases, users can often rely on the base fee alone. In high-demand hotspots like swaps or NFT mints, higher fees may be required to ensure timely inclusion.
By providing a clear, aggregated view of current fee markets, the Gas API aims to help provide better signal to the Solana ecosystem.
We’re exploring ways to further refine Solana fee estimation, including category-specific fees that distinguish between high-contention activities (like swaps) and less active ones (like loans). This could allow developers to tailor fee strategies without exposing transaction details, preserving both privacy and efficiency.
Solana’s fee model is unique—but developers deserve the same clarity and transparency they expect on EVM chains. With the addition of Solana support, Blocknative’s Gas Network continues to make gas markets more predictable, efficient, and accessible across ecosystems.
Developers can start using Solana gas data today through the Gas API