Welcome to DeFi exec

Gas cost is the most predictable drag on a small wallet. If I do not know the typical fee range for a swap, approve, or deposit, I cannot tell whether I am overpaying, or whether the chain is simply expensive that day. This post is my short, repeatable process for building a gas baseline from real receipts and using EIP-1559 math to interpret those receipts.

Block explorers are the fastest way I know to understand how a wallet really behaves. Before I move any funds, I map a wallet’s activity to see which contracts it touches, which tokens it moves, and how much gas it burns per workflow. This post covers the exact explorer tabs I use, how I interpret traces, and a small Python helper for normalizing CSV exports so I can compare activity across chains.

Approvals are the most common permission I grant in DeFi, and they are also the easiest place to make a lazy mistake. If I can’t explain exactly who is allowed to spend, for how much, and how I’ll revoke it, I don’t sign the approval.

New Year is a good moment to clean up and start fresh. I am keeping this simple and low-risk: a quick reset I can do with a lean wallet under $1k.

A DEX swap on an L2 looks like a button click, but it is a bundled set of smart contract calls, approvals, and fee accounting that behaves differently from mainnet. This post covers my first small swap on Base, what I checked before submitting, and the exact parameters I used to keep risk low.