Gas fees on EVM chains, explained

Every action that changes something on an EVM blockchain — sending tokens, swapping, or spinning PythWheel — is a transaction, and every transaction pays a fee called gas. Here's what that fee is and how it works.

What gas is

Gas measures how much computing work a transaction needs. A simple transfer uses a little; a transaction that runs a smart contract uses more. The fee pays the network for doing that work and makes spamming it expensive.

How the fee is calculated

The fee is the amount of gas your transaction uses, multiplied by the price of each unit of gas:

fee = gas used × gas price

On networks that use Ethereum's EIP-1559 fee model, the gas price has two parts:

• Base fee — set by the network. It rises when blocks are busy and falls when they're quiet.
• Priority fee — an optional tip that asks for your transaction to be included sooner.

Your wallet also sets a gas limit: the most gas the transaction may use. You only pay for the gas actually used — but if the work needs more than the limit, the transaction fails.

Which token pays for gas

Gas is always paid in the network's own token, whatever you're sending. On HyperEVM, where PythWheel runs, that's HYPE. On Ethereum and Base it's ETH. Keep a little of that token in your wallet — without it you can't send any transaction at all.

What you pay when you spin

A spin asks Pyth Entropy for a verifiable random number, and that service charges a fee. So a spin costs:

• The Pyth Entropy fee — the price of your spin's random number, read live from the Entropy contract before every spin.
• Gas — for the transaction itself.

Both are paid in HYPE, and your wallet shows the total before you confirm. PythWheel adds a 25% margin to the Entropy fee in case it rises before your transaction lands. The contract only ever charges the exact fee; the difference is set aside in the contract, credited to your wallet address.

Why failed or cancelled transactions still cost gas

The network does the work whether a transaction succeeds or not, so a transaction that is included in a block and then fails still pays for the gas it used. Cancelling in your wallet works by sending a replacement transaction with a higher fee — and that replacement pays gas too. A transaction you reject before it's sent costs nothing.

Checking a transaction yourself

Every transaction has a hash — a long ID that starts with 0x. Paste it into a block explorer to see whether it succeeded, how much gas it used, what it cost and which contract it called. For HyperEVM, use HyperEVMScan.

Good habits

• Keep a small amount of HYPE on HyperEVM for gas.
• If a transaction seems stuck, look it up on an explorer before sending another.
• Never share your seed phrase or private key. Nobody from PythWheel will ever ask for it.