You must pay for that computation, just like you would pay for a successful transaction. Even if it fails, the validators must confirm and execute your transaction, which takes computational power. You are paying for the computation of your transaction, regardless of whether it succeeds or fails. All the transactions that accompany this popularity naturally raise computational demands on the network. This DeFiLlama chart, comparing TVL (total value locked) in DeFi across major networks, shows Ethereum comprises ~58% of the DeFi market at the time of writing. Many of the largest, most established dapps were built on Ethereum, and continue to be the biggest players in DeFi. Ethereum is the home of DeFi (decentralized finance).Many spikes in gas prices can be attributed to highly anticipated NFT drops. Some other contributors to the price of Ethereum's gas fees include: Ethereum is, as a rule, far more decentralized than many other blockchains, and although many alternatives have much cheaper transactions, they are likely to have compromised on the 'security' element of the blockchain trilemma (although many claim to have solved this challenge). Ethereum's high level of security is a product of its age (it has weathered a lot more challenges and attacks than most blockchains) and its distributed, decentralized nature. In a way, security is the feature for which you're paying a premium. In addition to being under the sway of demand, one of the reasons Ethereum can be costly to transact on is because of its security. Each additional person can-if they have the means-increase their priority fee to raise the chances that their transaction will get processed sooner. The price of gas is dynamic and is essentially a product of demand: the more people that are trying to get their transactions processed by the network, the higher it will be. BNB, MATIC, etc.) Okay, yes, I get that, but why are they so high? (Other networks that use gas, or have a similar model, usually pay gas in their native token: e.g. That payment is calculated in gas, and gas is always paid in ETH. When you send tokens, interact with a contract, send ETH, or do anything else on the blockchain, you must pay for that computation. The Ethereum network requires gas to execute transactions.

Ethereum transaction fee spike