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How to save on gas when minting or buying an NFT?
How to save on gas when minting or buying an NFT?
Ev Tchebotarev avatar
Written by Ev Tchebotarev
Updated over a week ago

When you mint or buy an NFT, you can transact using current market gas rate. However, sometimes gas can go or down dramatically, so knowing how to limit the gas can save you upward of hundreds of dollars.

All wallets have the ability to set specific gas limit. In Metamask, click on “EDIT” above the estimated gas fee. See screenshot below.

On the next screen, click “Edit suggested gas fee”

On the last screen, click “Advanced Options” to reveal ability to set your gas fee.

Only 2 parameters need to be changed to set your gas limit. Often, you can edit just one, the “Max fee (GWEI)”. You can look up the current gas prices (ie Etherscan Gas Tracker) and adjust the gas to some lower number.

Additionally, you can adjust “Max priority fee”, which is basically a multiplier and a tip for the miner to include your transaction. If you are keen to maximize your savings and willing to wait, you can put it at 1.

In this example, on Gasprice website, we see 29 Gwei, 28 Gwei and 18 Gwei. This means that if I am willing to wait, I can put gas fee even lower than 18, ie at 13 Gwei. This will drop the cost of buying an NFT from $14.41 to $4.82, savings of 66%.

However, that transaction can be pending for several hours, waiting for gas to drop, and for my transaction to be included in the blockchain record.

This means anyone can buy this NFT if they submit a transaction with a higher gas limit. If that happens, you will lose your transaction fee (ie $4.82 in that case) and will not get that NFT.

When minting your photo series or an edition, you can use the same gas limit to save money. If you are not in a rush, you can set a low gas limit and have your transaction pending for several hours or longer.

Note: If you set your gas limit too low, ie at 3 Gwei, the transaction is likely to be stuck forever. Pending transactions are ignored by miners after a certain time period. If you are a “supersaver”, we recommend checking Ethereumprice.org and setting a limit closer to the average of the day of your mint.

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