Gas

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.

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.