Solana & memecoins
What are gas fees in crypto?
Gas is the fee paid to have a transaction included in a block. On Solana the base fee is a fraction of a cent, which is why small positions and high trade counts are viable there. The number that actually matters is the priority fee: an optional extra that buys earlier placement when the network is busy.
Base fee versus priority fee
- Base fee. Tiny and effectively fixed. Not a factor in any decision.
- Priority fee. Optional, and the thing that determines whether your transaction lands early during congestion.
- Failed transactions still pay. Repeatedly retrying a trade into a moving price is a real cost.
When the priority fee matters
Almost never on a quiet chain, and decisively during the launches and volume spikes that produce most memecoin volatility. Those are precisely the moments a copied entry has to land quickly, so a default fee is a false economy: saving a fraction of a cent to arrive after the move is a bad trade in every case.
Keep SOL for fees
Fees are paid in SOL. A wallet fully deployed into tokens cannot sell them, because the sell transaction itself needs SOL. Keep a small buffer permanently untouched.
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