Ethereum Gas Fees Hit Five-Year Low: 5 Things to Do Now

1. UBR Project Booklist for July: The UBR "Universal Basic Reader" Project continues to feature book selections by Hunter Bookstore, with a special lineup coinciding with the book fair. This month's list boasts 61 titles, including several major works. Due to the large number of books, the "decentralized purchasing" period has been extended until the end of September (truth be told, I delayed announcing this because of my own laziness 🙏🏼). Take some time to visit Hunter Bookstore and browse around.

2. Recommended Reading: Check out the new e-book by The Witness, 公民司法認知──由起訴到審訊的香港法律 101 Public Legal Awareness which includes messages and signatures from the founders. It’s both useful and worth adding to your collection, so please support it.

Since Bitcoin's fourth halving, the market has been a rollercoaster. Some believe the bull market has quietly slipped away, while others are convinced that Bitcoin will follow its historical cycle and that next year will mark the true bull run.

While opinions clash over price movements, application usage remains largely sluggish. A key indicator of blockchain activity, Ethereum's gas price, has hit its lowest level in five years. The ethgas.app site frequently shows the unusual sight of "1, 1, 1" — even for fast transactions, the gas price is just 1 Gwei. Some investors worry that low Ethereum usage could lead to inflation and drag down its price, casting doubts on its future.

As for me, I say, "This is the moment I’ve been waiting for." Infrastructure is meant to be used, and low fees are a blessing for users. When blockchain-based applications see widespread adoption, usage will drive fees back to a "reasonable" level. Rather than fretting over token prices, users should seize this rare opportunity and tackle tasks that are typically off-limits when fees are high. Here are my five suggestions: 

When using platforms like Uniswap, Aave, OpenSea, or any other service involving ERC-20 tokens or ERC-721 NFTs, you need to authorize the respective smart contracts to access your wallet assets (token approvals). For convenience, these services often request full access by default, with no expiration on permissions. Over time, your wallet accumulates a long list of approved smart contracts that can access your assets and NFTs at any moment.

You might think it’s safe as long as the DApps you’ve authorized are reliable. However, even a trustworthy app at the time of approval might eventually have security vulnerabilities that hackers can exploit, allowing them to drain your wallet. The best practice is to periodically clean up outdated approvals — like revoking a bank's authorization to make large transfers to a third party when you no longer need it. If needed, you can always re-authorize later.

To review and revoke wallet approvals, Revoke.cash is a handy tool. If you use the Rabby wallet like me, it's even more convenient — just use the built-in "Approvals" feature to list your account's permissions across various EVM chains. You can sort them by trust level, date, and other criteria, then select multiple items and click "Revoke". Sign, and the approvals are canceled. Like authorizing access, revoking permissions also incurs a transaction fee. I recently canceled an approval at a gas price of 1.6 Gwei, which cost 0.00004 ETH, or about 0.10 USD — barely noticeable. In the past, when gas prices were higher, canceling each approval could cost two or three dollars, making it tempting to keep the approval in place, hoping nothing would go wrong.

Earlier, I mentioned that Ethereum gas prices are at historic lows, which some might attribute to a lack of activity on the network. While it's true that the hype around web3 has cooled off from the highs of the last couple of years, the primary reason for the low fees is actually the maturity of Layer 2 (L2) networks. Many transactions that used to happen on the Ethereum mainnet have now shifted to L2s. In my experience over the past year, I've used L2 networks much more frequently than the main chain. The macro data supports this trend as well — according to Coingecko, the current total value locked (TVL) on the Ethereum mainnet is around 48 billion USD, while the top three L2s or sidechains — Arbitrum, Base and Polygon — have locked values of 2.7 billion, 1.5 billion, and 0.9 billion USD, respectively. The mainnet is now generally reserved for "the rich", where transaction fees ranging from a few dollars to even hundreds are just a small price to pay. For regular users like me, sticking to L2s provides sufficient security at a fraction of the cost.

Still, I’ve noticed many web3 users have yet to make the switch to L2s. This is partly due to a minor learning curve but also because the initial transfer of assets from Layer 1 (L1) to L2 itself involves a mainnet transaction fee, which can be relatively high. I recently tested a transaction using Superbridge to move ETH from the Ethereum mainnet to Optimism. At a gas price of 2.2 Gwei, the fee was about 0.0009 ETH, which translates to around 2.30 USD. That's not too bad, but if you want to save even more, you could wait for gas prices to dip to 1 Gwei or lower, which would save you another USD or so. 

You might think a multisig wallet (multisignature wallet) is only for DAOs, but that’s not the case. Multisig wallets have several advantages that are useful for individuals too. For instance, you can set up a multisig wallet with your partner, similar to a joint bank account. It can be set so that either one person can sign to authorize transactions (1/2), or both people need to sign (2/2).

Even if you’re flying solo, a multisig wallet can still be very handy. To enhance security, you could create a 2/2 multisig wallet managed by two of your own wallets — for example, one stored in the desktop version of Metamask and another in the mobile version of Coinbase Wallet. Conversely, to avoid losing access to all your assets due to a single lost seed phrase, you could use a similar setup but set it to require only 1 out of 2 signatures to authorize transactions.

However, the downside of a multisig wallet is also quite apparent. Besides the added complexity of the signing process, the transaction fees can be significantly higher. Previously, setting up a multisig wallet on the Ethereum mainnet could cost tens of dollars. That’s why now is the best time to do it. I just tested it—setting up a new multisig wallet using Gnosis Safe on the mainnet with a gas price of 0.9 Gwei cost only 0.000233 ETH, which is around 0.6 USD.

Another task where the gas fees alone can be painfully high is registering an ENS (Ethereum Name Service) address. ENS is like the Ethereum version of DNS (Domain Name System); it maps long, complex wallet addresses to easy-to-remember names. For example, if you know my ENS— ckxpress.eth — and want to support this writer (thanks 🙏🏼), you can simply send ETH, USDC or other cryptocurrencies to ckxpress.eth. Most wallets can interpret this.

ENS names are cheaper than .com domains, with a registration fee of just 5 USD per year (or equivalent in ETH). However, the gas fees for the registration process often cost several times more than the registration fee itself — making the helper costlier than the main service. If you’re looking to establish your web3 identity, now is a great time to register your own ENS, as gas fees are currently low, costing only around 1 or 2 USD. Even if you already have an ENS address, you can take advantage of the low gas prices to add details like an avatar, subdomains, L2 network account addresses, and more to further enhance your web3 identity.

If you're an active user of DeFi or NFTs, or if your wallet has been in use for years, your account likely contains a whole bunch of tokens — many of which are mere "dust" with multiple zeros after the decimal or have already hit zero in value. Even if you don't trade frequently, you might still face this issue as numerous tokens and NFTs are directly airdropped into wallets — especially those used for phishing.

Unless you can't stand seeing a pile of useless coins in your account, clearing out these tokens is usually an irrational move. That's because converting dust to ETH or sending scam tokens to a burn address will cost more in gas fees than the tokens are worth. For those with OCD, you might want to seize the opportunity when gas prices drop to 1 Gwei or even lower to do a "spring cleaning" and remove all those annoying coins and NFTs.

P.S. People often say my writing locations are quite varied; the first draft of this article was written at the West Kowloon Magistrates' Court. Unlike courtroom dramas, most of the time is spent waiting — 80% boredom and only 20% action. Yet, it's in that 20% where the defendants' unexpected moves catch you off guard, almost bringing you to tears. Just a hint of remorse in a plea could lead to a reduced sentence. What drives someone to steadfastly avoid betraying their conscience, even at the cost of years of freedom, to uphold their commitment to voters and their hope for democracy and a brighter future for Hong Kong? As long as there are young people like Ng Kin Wai in Hong Kong, I don't need any more reasons to stay.