how do you calculate gas fees 
originally gas fees were a product of a gas limit and the gas price per unit in august 2021 ethereum changed its calculations for gas fees to use a base fee a set fee for the transaction set by the network units of gas required and a priority fee the priority fee is a tip to the validator that chooses a transaction the more you tip the higher the chances are that your transaction will be processed faster 1gas fees are calculated using this formula so imagine you wanted to pay a friend 2 eth and you think it will require two units of gas the base fee is 11 gwei and you provide a tip of 3 gwei your gas fee would be this equals 0 000000028 eth it s added to your transfer total which is now 2 000000028 eth gas and the ethereum virtual machine evm ethereum as a platform and system is designed to be used by others to create more use cases for blockchain and cryptocurrency for this reason it is commonly called the ethereum virtual machine because applications can be created that run on it the evm is essentially a large virtual computer like an application in the cloud that runs other blockchain based applications within it many decentralized applications cryptocurrencies and tokens have been created using the evm because the ethereum blockchain is part of the evm the cryptocurrencies built on that blockchain require gas fees for example a popular token built on ethereum s blockchain is dai because it uses the ethereum blockchain users need to pay gas fees in gwei to conduct transactions on the chain concerns about ethereum gas feesan ongoing concern for any cryptocurrency that requires transaction fees is the price users pay for the transactions before 2020 gas fees on ethereum were very low measured in a few cents with occasional spikes after january 2020 gas fees began climbing as the network attracted new users reaching more than 20 sometimes much higher for long periods after the merge the merge of the beacon chain and the ethereum main chain when proof of stake was implemented fees began to range from a few dollars to as high as 30 however the merge was not designed to address the problem of high fees it was one of many updates that when combined are believed to eventually lower gas fees 2there are a few ways you can avoid high fees first you can choose times when the network is not so busy a challenging endeavor but not impossible etherscan provides a gas tracker that shows the day s high low and average gas fees so you can try to time your necessary transactions using its tracker or another like it 3 the website also provides a chrome extension you can install to the browser that lets you see gas prices in real time second you can use layer 2 solutions or dapps for your transactions taking your activity off the main chain is one of the best ways to keep your fees low 