Ethereum is one of the most popular and versatile blockchain networks that exists in crypto today. In this article, we go into depth about network fees, nonces, transactions, and, finally some common errors you may come across.

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Ethereum is a blockchain network that was created by programmer Vitalik Buterin. It first launched on 30 July 2015.

Ethereum is an open-source blockchain network that supports smart contracts. The primary cryptocurrency of the Ethereum blockchain is Ethereum (ETH), also known as Ether, which is used to power the network.

The Ethereum blockchain is home to thousands of ERC20 tokens (fungible tokens), ERC721 tokens (non-fungible tokens), as well as many other decentralized apps all trying to redefine the internet with web3 - a decentralized internet.

Ethereum is a blockchain platform that supports the creation of decentralized apps, custom tokens, and general programs using smart contracts.

In essence, Ethereum is a very powerful blockchain technology that allows anyone to build their own programs that can run on the Ethereum blockchain network. Ethereum's power comes from the fact that it is considered Turing complete.

Turing complete means that with enough time and resources, a program can theoretically solve any computational problem. This also means that it can implement and understand any future coding ideas, as well, keeping it relevant for many years to come.

When you create a program on Ethereum, your smart contract is forever saved on the Ethereum blockchain, and it is immutable once you deploy it. This means that once your program is launched on the Ethereum network, the code can’t be changed.

This in-built safety feature allows you to trust that your code can’t be tampered with once it is launched, making Ethereum a secure platform to run your programs.

Every transaction on the Ethereum network will take up computer power and resources and therefore will have some sort of network fee associated with the transaction. The Ethereum network refers to these transaction fees as gas. Gas is referred to in small denominations of ETH called gwei.

Gwei is a smaller unit of ETH:

1 gwei = 0.000000001 ETH (or 10-9 ETH)

Network fees cost a fraction of an ETH. It is clearer to see a transaction fee of 50 gwei, for example, rather than a transaction fee of 0.00000005 ETH.

You can read more about Ethereum gas in Ethereum.org's developer resources: Ethereum: Gas and fees.

A gas limit is set for every transaction on the Ethereum network and refers to the maximum amount of gas a transaction is willing to pay to get confirmed.

The minimum gas limit is set at 21,000 across the Ethereum network, and there is no upper limit set by the network. The upper limit will be set by the user or wallet sending the transaction and will depend on the current market conditions as to what the limit will be.

The gas limit’s main use is to ensure you do not overpay network fees, as the gas limit will ensure that if your transaction is taking up more network resources than originally expected, the transaction will fail without the error out of gas.

Gas price refers to the amount of gwei a transaction is willing to spend per unit of gas in the gas limit. For more information, please see our section on Ethereum fees.

We will use this Kyber token swap transaction as an example: 0x5cb018e5a7e17b310f0d201652765ab1fbef73064d004572a99919170cab6bbf

If you would like to set custom fees for your ETH transactions, this is possible. For information on how to do this, please see our guide: How do I set custom Ethereum network fees?

A nonce is a value that can only be used once. The nonce in Ethereum is used as a counter to ensure a transaction can’t be sent twice, to protect against replay attacks.

In Ethereum, each transaction sent from your ETH wallet will automatically include a nonce. This acts as a counter to identify the transaction in the wallet's outgoing activity. The nonce is included in all outgoing transactions, whether you are sending ETH, ERC20 tokens, NFTs, or interacting with smart contracts.

If you create a brand new wallet and send one transaction from it, that nonce will equal 0. The next transaction you send from your wallet will have a nonce of 1, and so on.

Nonces must be confirmed in order from the lowest nonce to the highest nonce, and you cannot skip confirming a nonce.

To identify the nonce value of your transaction, you can use a blockchain explorer like Etherscan. The nonce will be shown in your transaction details on Etherscan, as shown in the screenshot below:

To accelerate your transactions, you can use a feature called Replace-By-Fee.

Let’s imagine you have sent a transaction out of your Exodus wallet at nonce 99 and set a low fee. After some time, you realize it has gotten stuck, and you would like to speed up the confirmation process, so you click on Accelerate, and soon enough, your transaction has been confirmed, but how is this possible?

With the in-built Ethereum feature called Replace-By-Fee, your Exodus wallet will rebroadcast your stuck transaction at nonce 99 with the same nonce and the same amount of ETH (or ERC20 token depending on what you have sent), but the transaction will include a higher network fee. The higher fee gives the transaction higher priority on the Ethereum network and will speed up its confirmation.

In Exodus, when using Replace-By-Fee, the gas price gets bumped up 20% from the original gas price but keeps the same gas limit and the same ETH (or ERC20) token value being sent.

The 20% higher gas price is enough to ensure your transaction gets confirmed in a reasonable time.

In general, you might not ever need to know how nonces work. They are supposed to be automatic and “hidden.” However, there may be times when your transaction gets stuck and prevents you from sending out any new ETH transactions. This is due to nonces.

As we've established, nonces must be confirmed in order - so if any transactions are stuck, it's important to check to see what nonces have been confirmed and which are still pending. You can do this by using a block explorer like Etherscan.

This is what it will look like in your transaction details on Etherscan if you have unconfirmed transactions at lower nonces than your current transaction:

This error will occur when your transaction has hit the gas limit as more resources are needed to confirm the transaction.

When you encounter this error, the amount of ETH (or ERC20) you have tried to send does not leave your address.

As this error occurs when the transaction needs more gas than the gas limit that was set for the transaction, this transaction will use all of the gas until it hits the gas limit and then fails with the error "out of gas."

While the ETH from the transaction will not leave your address, the gas used in the transaction will be deducted. This is because the gas was already used in the attempt, even though the transaction was not confirmed.

Your Exodus wallet will automatically set the gas limit for you to ensure you always have the appropriate limit set. However, the “out of gas” error can happen if you are interacting with a resource-heavy smart contract that needs to run lots of code to perform your transaction. When this happens, it is best to find out what the appropriate gas limit is from whoever is maintaining the smart contract you are interacting with.

This error can occur for multiple reasons; it is usually specific to the smart contract you are interacting with.

When you encounter this error, it is almost as if the transaction never happened, so the amount of ETH (or ERC20) does not leave your address.

However, the amount of ETH used to pay the gas fee still gets deducted from your wallet as the gas resources were used in this transaction, even though the transaction wasn't confirmed. You just won’t max out the gas limit like an "out of gas" error, so in this "reverted" case, you will not waste as much ETH in network fees.

This error can occur for multiple reasons; it is usually specific to the smart contract you are interacting with.

When you encounter this error, it is best to contact the maintainer of the smart contract you are interacting with to understand why you are receiving this error.

This error can occur for multiple reasons; it is usually specific to the smart contract you are interacting with.

When you encounter this error, it is best to contact the maintainer of the smart contract you are interacting with to understand why you are receiving this error.

An Ethereum (ETH) address is not case-sensitive. It doesn’t affect the functionality of an Ethereum address if you enter the letters as uppercase or lowercase - you can send and receive funds regardless.

However, when looking at your Ethereum address, you will notice that it contains both uppercase and lowercase letters. This means your address is checksummed. The checksum is in place to prevent transactions from being sent to the wrong destination address by accident.

If you use the checksummed version and mistype it, Exodus will warn you that the address is not formatted correctly and won’t let you send it.

It is always best practice to either copy and paste addresses or scan a QR code. This is because it is very easy to make a mistake when entering an address manually. If even one character of an address is wrong, your funds will be sent to a different address and be lost forever.