EIP-1559 changed how transaction fees work on Ethereum, and most EVM chains have adopted it. Every block has a base fee set by the protocol, which is burned, and users add a priority fee (a tip) for the validator. Instead of guessing one gas price, a transaction sets a maximum fee per gas and a maximum priority fee, and pays the base fee plus the tip, never more than the maximum.
That sounds simple, but any software that sends transactions, such as wallets, trading bots, payment backends and relayers, has to handle it well. Poor fee handling means overpaying, or transactions that sit in the mempool for hours.
What Good Fee Handling Looks Like
- Estimating the base fee ahead: the base fee can rise by up to 12.5% per block when blocks are full, so the maximum fee needs headroom for a few blocks of increases.
- Choosing the priority fee: based on recent blocks and how urgent the transaction is, rather than a fixed number.
- Stuck transactions: detecting transactions that are not being included and replacing them with the same nonce and higher fees, within the replacement rules nodes enforce.
- Nonce management: for backends that send many transactions from one account, keeping nonces in order so one stuck transaction does not block everything behind it.
- Fee caps: hard limits so a fee spike never turns a routine transaction into an expensive one.
Layer 2 Differences
On layer 2 networks the execution fee follows the same model, but there is often an extra component: the cost of publishing transaction data to Ethereum. On OP Stack chains such as Base and Optimism this appears as a separate L1 data fee. Fee estimation has to include it, or users see surprising totals.
Frequently Asked Questions about EIP-1559
Do I pay the full max fee?
No. You pay the base fee of the block plus your priority fee, and anything up to your maximum is not charged. The maximum is a safety limit, not the price.
How do I speed up a stuck transaction?
By sending a replacement with the same nonce and higher fees. Nodes require a minimum increase before they accept a replacement, so the bump must be large enough.
Do all EVM chains use EIP-1559?
Most major ones do, with differences in parameters and extra fee components on some layer 2 networks. We check the specifics of each chain you use.
Who owns the code?
Ownership of the source code is set out in the contract, and the code can be fully yours, including documentation and tests.
Part of our work on Ethereum standards (EIPs and ERCs) and smart contract development.
Get Your Transactions Confirmed
Tell us what your software sends and how fast it needs to confirm. We will build fee handling that is both reliable and economical.