🫧🍀 The Gas War is the most intense resource battle in the Ethereum network, especially during NFT minting, popular DeFi project launches, or on-chain congestion.
Do you think 'the highest bidder wins'? No, no~! The real Gas War involves miner strategies, mempool games, MEV (Miner Extractable Value), and even off-chain bidding black technology.
✨1. Gas Basics: Who decides the order of transactions?
(1) Gas Price vs. Gas Limit
Gas Price: The price you are willing to pay for each unit of Gas (Gwei).
Gas Limit: The maximum amount of Gas you allow for a transaction (complex operations require a higher Limit).
(2) How do miners choose transactions?
Miners do not simply sort by total fees (Gas Price × Gas Limit), but by:
'Gas Price Density' = Gas Price / Gas Used
(This is how much profit can be earned for each unit of actual consumed Gas)
For example: See the picture
Although Transaction B has a lower total fee, the Gas Price density is higher (200 Gwei / 20,000 Gas Used), so miners will prioritize packaging it!
✨2. The 'Hidden Rules' of the Gas War
(1) The Deceptiveness of Gas Limit
Low Gas Price + Extremely High Gas Limit
Some transactions intentionally set a very high Gas Limit (like 10,000,000), but only use a small portion (like 50,000).
Miners may mistakenly believe 'this transaction may pay more', and prioritize packaging it.
Remaining unused Gas Limit will be consumed by miners (users will not get refunds).
For example:
When minting NFTs, the project’s contract may consume gas inconsistently, allowing speculators to cut in line using this strategy.
(2) Miners' 'Selfish Packing'
Miners can choose not to broadcast the transaction, secretly package it first, and then decide whether to make it public.
If a higher Gas transaction is found, it may replace the previous one (RBF, Replace-by-Fee).
(3) MEV (Miner Extractable Value)
Frontrunning:
Bots monitor the mempool, discovering profitable transactions (like large DEX exchanges), and immediately execute with higher Gas.
Backrunning:
If you see a transaction that will cause price fluctuations, immediately follow up (like copy trading).
✨3. How to Win the Gas War?
(1) Ordinary User Strategies
✅ Use Gas prediction tools:
Etherscan Gas Tracker
✅ Dynamically Adjust Gas:
Enable 'Advanced Gas Control' in MetaMask or hardware wallets to manually set Gas Price + Gas Limit.
✅ Avoid Peak Times:
Peak times for Gas Wars are usually during daytime in Europe and America (UTC 12:00-18:00).
(2) High-level Player Strategies
🔥 Private RPC Nodes:
Do not broadcast transactions through public Infura/Alchemy to avoid being monitored by front-running bots.
🔥 Flashbots (Dark Pool Trading):
Directly trade with miners privately, bypassing the public mempool to avoid MEV attacks.
🔥 Gas Tokens (CHI, GST2):
Mint when Gas is low, destroy when Gas is high, to save on fees (some effects became invalid after EIP-1559)
✨4. Changes in the Gas War after EIP-1559
In August 2021, Ethereum upgraded EIP-1559, introducing:
Base Fee: Automatically adjusted, directly destroyed (no longer given to miners).
Tip (Priority Fee): An extra incentive for miners to package your transaction.
The Game Under the New Rules:
Base fee fluctuations can be dramatic, potentially surging 10 times during NFT buying sprees.
Tips become crucial, as miners will prioritize packaging transactions with high Priority Fees.
✨5. Ultimate Conclusion
The essence of the Gas War is 'on-chain bidding', where the highest bidder wins, but the rules are more complex than they appear.
Miners, MEV bots, project parties, and retail investors are all in the game, and ordinary users are easily harvested.
Winning Strategy = Calculating Gas Density in advance + Using private trading channels + Avoiding peak times.
🍓 On Ethereum, 'having money doesn't necessarily mean winning, but not understanding the rules definitely means losing.'
(Unless you directly bribe miners… then you enter a deeper layer of the 'dark forest' 😈)