In the field of blockchain, Ethereum and Solana are two representative platforms, each with a huge ecosystem and user base. However, the significant difference in the fee model between the two brings a completely different experience to users, and has also become an important consideration for many people when choosing on-chain applications. This article will provide an in-depth explanation of Solana’s fee model, clarify how it differs from Ethereum, and the impact of these differences on users and developers.
1. Ethereum’s Fee Model: Single Fee Market
On Ethereum, fees (also known as "gas fees") are the rewards that users pay to miners or validators to execute smart contracts and process transactions. Ethereum's fee model has the following characteristics:
Global shared cost model
Ethereum's fees are directly tied to the overall usage of the network. If a certain application (such as a popular NFT minting event) consumes a lot of network resources, the fees on the entire chain will increase. Regardless of whether the user participates in the popular event, as long as any operation (such as a simple transfer) on the chain is performed, it may face high fees.
This model makes the fees more volatile, especially when the network is congested, the user experience may be greatly reduced.
Fee Competition Mechanism
Users need to compete for transaction space in the block through bidding. Transactions with lower fees may be delayed or even not completed.
Although Ethereum introduced the base fee (Base Fee) and priority fee (Tip) mechanisms to improve user experience after the EIP-1559 upgrade, the problem of fees during peak periods still exists.
Solana’s Fee Model: Isolation and Multi-Level Fees
In contrast, Solana’s fee model adopts a layered and segregated design, which is fundamentally different from Ethereum’s single fee market.
1. Solana’s Two Types of Fees
Solana's fees are mainly divided into transaction fees and storage fees, which are aimed at different scenarios:
(1) Transaction Fees: Localized Fee Market
Solana’s transaction fee model is application-local, meaning that fees are calculated independently for each application or smart contract.
Advantages: A popular application (such as NFT sales) will not affect the fees of the entire network. If the transaction demand for a specific application surges, only the fees of that application will increase, and other users can still make ordinary transfers or use other applications at lower fees.
This design avoids excessive occupation of network resources by a single application and ensures the on-chain experience of ordinary users.
(2) Storage Fee: Leasing Mechanism
Solana introduces storage fees (also known as rent) to support the storage of on-chain data. For example, when a user needs to receive a new token, he needs to open a corresponding token account. The storage fee is the fee paid for opening and maintaining these accounts.
Refundable: Storage fees are different from transaction fees in that they are refundable. Users can close their accounts and get back their storage fees when they no longer need them. This design helps in the dynamic allocation and optimization of resources.
2. Advantages of Solana’s Fee Model
(1) Segregated Fee Market
Isolation: Cost changes in one application will not spread to other applications.
Stability: Ordinary users don’t have to worry about network congestion caused by popular events, and fees are more predictable.
(2) Extremely low average cost
Solana has an extremely low average transaction fee, with the current median fee being only $0.003, maintaining a good cost advantage even at high activity (800-2400 TPS).
For users who make small payments or perform high-frequency transactions, Solana provides a more economical option.
(3) Flexibility of the rental mechanism
The introduction of storage fees solves the problem of long-term occupation of on-chain storage resources. Through the rental mechanism, Solana can incentivize users to use storage space reasonably while ensuring that unused resources can be released.
3. Comparison of Solana and Ethereum Fee Model
Features Ethereum Solana fee market is globally shared and affected by the usage of the entire network Localization, fees are calculated independently between applications Fee fluctuations are easily affected by popular activities, and the fluctuations are large Strong isolation, fee fluctuations are small Fee levels are generally high, and gas fees may soar during peak periods The average fee is extremely low, and the median fee is about $0.003 Storage mechanism On-chain data is permanently stored, and fees are non-refundable Lease mechanism, fees are refundable User experience High fees and network congestion may affect user experience Low fees and stable performance bring a smooth experience
4. Limitations and Improvements of Solana’s Fee Model
While Solana’s fee model is superior to Ethereum’s in many ways, there are some areas for improvement:
Optimizing storage pricing models
The current storage fee model is not yet fully optimized and may need further improvement to adapt to data storage needs of different scales.
Execution flaws in the fee market
Although the local charging market solves the problem of global shared fees, in a high-concurrency environment, fee imbalances may occur in the local market, requiring a more intelligent dynamic adjustment mechanism.
Improvement of cost API
Existing fee assessment APIs lack predictability, and developers and users may face certain uncertainties when planning transaction costs.
5. Conclusion: Solana’s fee model is more competitive
Solana's fee model provides users and developers with more efficient and economical options through the localization of transaction fees and the leasing mechanism of storage fees. Compared with Ethereum’s single fee market, Solana’s isolated fee market significantly reduces users’ transaction costs and improves the efficiency of on-chain resource allocation.
With the increasing popularity of blockchain applications and the rapid iteration of technology, Solana's innovation in the fee model has not only increased the attractiveness of its ecosystem, but also provided experience for other public chains to learn from. In the future, as the fee mechanism is further improved, Solana is expected to play a more important role in the decentralized ecosystem and bring better user experience to users and developers.
