Sei 101: How Gas Fees Work on Sei

Sei is the first parallelized EVM chain, which combines the advantages of Ethereum and Solana. Designed with speed and efficiency at its core, Sei is optimized to handle high-volume transactions while maintaining security and decentralization.

Gas fees are critical component of the Sei blockchain, and while gas fees on Sei operate a bit differently than other chains like Ethereum, the fundamentals remain the same.

This article will break down in detail how gas fees work on Sei.

Why you should understand how gas fees work on Sei

Gas fees aren’t just a technical detail—they have a huge impact on the user experience and the overall efficiency of the network.

On Sei, these fees incentivize validators to process transactions and help keep the network secure. With Sei handling a large volume of decentralized trading, gas fees are particularly relevant: even small changes in gas pricing can affect user costs and the efficiency of trading dApps.

In many blockchains, gas fees can quickly add up, especially during peak usage times. Sei, however, is engineered to keep fees low and predictable, ensuring traders aren’t bogged down by exorbitant costs.

Keeping gas fees in check not only makes Sei attractive for users, but also boosts its competitiveness in the blockchain ecosystem where the cost of executing transactions is often a pain point.

The high-level TLDR on Sei

First things first, Sei is its own layer-1 blockchain — unlike Ethereum's L2 networks like Base, Sei operates independently.

As with any blockchain, executing transactions on Sei requires computational work. This work is measured in "gas." Gas fees ensure validators have the incentive to process transactions and secure the network. For users and developers, this means a few key benefits:

• Faster execution
• Efficient processing
• Lower gas fees than many other layer-1 networks
• Designed specifically for decentralized trading, giving developers tools to optimize transactions

Sei's gas system is designed with trading efficiency in mind, keeping fees low and predictable. Let’s dive deeper into the specifics of how Sei handles gas.

How do network fees on Sei work?

At its core, gas on Sei is a measure of the computational effort required to execute a transaction or smart contract. Think of it like a toll fee that users pay to get their transactions from point A to point B across the network.

You’ll need to pay for this gas in Sei (SEI), the native token of the network.

Here’s a breakdown of the essential components of gas on Sei:

• Gas is a unit that measures the computational effort to execute a transaction. The more complex the transaction, the more gas it requires.
• Gas Price is the amount of Sei you’re willing to pay per unit of gas. Users set this price, and it can affect how quickly your transaction is processed.
• Gas Limit refers to the maximum amount of gas you’re willing to spend. If a transaction exceeds this limit, it will fail, but the gas is still consumed.

Together, these elements determine the fee you pay for a transaction.

Fee = Gas Price × Gas Limit

The good news? Sei enforces minimum gas prices, which keeps the system secure while preventing users from overpaying for transactions.

Maximum Gas + Limits

Sei employs a maximum gas limit to ensure no single transaction overwhelms the system. This protects against excessive resource use by computationally heavy transactions.

Developers can find the exact maximum gas limits for Sei in the chain registry or by querying the /consensus_params endpoint from an RPC node, like https://rpc.pacific-1.sei.io/consensus_params.

Additionally, each transaction has a max size in bytes, which ensures that transactions remain efficient and prevent bloating. The byte limits vary between chains and can also be queried through the RPC node.

Max Gas for Queries

Queries also consume gas on Sei. Just like with transactions, there's a maximum gas limit for queries. Since these limits are specific to the RPC node, it's best to check with your RPC provider to understand the exact maximums.

Sending Gas in Transactions

When broadcasting a transaction on Sei, users need to specify both the gas price and the gas limit. You can set these parameters using either the Sei daemon (seid) or libraries like CosmJS.

Using seid

With seid, you control the transaction fee and gas parameters with command flags:

bash
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seid tx bank send <from_address> <to_address> <amount> --gas <gas_limit> --gas-prices <gas_price> --fees <fee>

Using CosmJS

When building with CosmJS, gas fees are set using the StdFee object:

javascript
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const fee = {
  amount: [{ denom: "usei", amount: "5000" }],
  gas: "200000",
};
const result = await client.signAndBroadcast(address, [msg], fee, memo);

Using EVM (wagmi)

For developers using EVM-compatible tools like wagmi, setting gas parameters is straightforward:

javascript
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import { sendTransaction } from 'wagmi/actions'

sendTransaction({
  request: {
    to: '0xRecipientAddress',
    value: '1000000000000000000', // 1 ETH
    gasPrice: '100000000000', // 100 Gwei
    gasLimit: '21000',
  },
})

Optimizing Gas for Smart Contracts

Optimizing gas is a critical task for developers on Sei, especially for complex dApps. Here are some best practices:

• Minimize storage operations: Accessing and modifying blockchain state is expensive, so reduce this where possible.
• Use fixed-size data structures: These consume less gas and process faster than variable-sized structures.
• Avoid unnecessary computations: Keep your smart contract code lean.
• Use an optimizer: Solidity and other smart contract languages offer optimizers to minimize gas costs by reducing bytecode size.

For most users, gas fees aren’t something you’ll spend a lot of time tweaking—Sei’s defaults are designed to keep fees fair and low.

However, for developers and power users, there are some smart strategies to optimize gas usage. Simple steps like minimizing unnecessary computations or optimizing how smart contracts interact with storage can lead to significant cost savings over time.

And for dApps looking to enhance user experience, Sei offers Fee Grants, allowing developers to cover users' gas fees. This makes the network more user-friendly by offering seamless, gasless transactions for end-users, which is a huge plus in a competitive market.

Fee Grants

Sei also introduces a powerful feature called Fee Grants.

This allows one account to pay gas fees on behalf of another. Fee Grants are particularly useful for decentralized applications (dApps) that want to offer gasless transactions to their users. For example, a dApp could cover user fees to improve user experience.

Gas fees are an essential part of using Sei, but understanding and optimizing them can ensure you're not overpaying or running into failed transactions.

Whether you're a developer deploying a contract or a trader making quick exchanges, keeping your gas strategy sharp will help keep your transactions efficient and cost-effective.

For more details on Sei’s gas structure and transaction fees, you can dive deeper into Sei’s chain registry and technical documentation.

Why Gas Matters For Sei’s future

Sei’s unique positioning as a high-speed, low-latency blockchain focused on trading makes its gas structure incredibly important.

Efficient gas management ensures that Sei can continue to scale, even as transaction volumes grow. Keeping gas fees low is crucial for attracting developers and users who are tired of overpaying on other chains.

Sei's commitment to low, predictable fees is one of the reasons it's poised to become a dominant player in the decentralized trading space.

Also keep in mind this is how Sei works today, and technical accuracy is always subject to change based on Sei’s consensus mechanism and governance. Blocknative will routinely monitor development and update this information accordingly over time.

Driving gas solutions with Blocknative

Apps, projects, and protocols within the Base ecosystem should consider using Blocknative to drive gas solutions at scale. You can learn more about our SEI Gas Estimator and SEI Gas API. And reach out to the Blocknative team via Telegram to schedule a call.