Solana vs Ethereum Rollups: Fee Models

Predictable micro-costs: ~$0.00025 per basic transaction, with fees denominated in native SOL. This matters for high-frequency trading (HFT) and social/gaming apps where user experience depends on consistent, negligible costs.

No L1 gas auctions: Fees are a protocol-set priority fee, not a volatile auction. This matters for protocols like Jupiter, Phantom, and Tensor that require stable operational costs without unpredictable spikes during congestion.

Costs tied to Ethereum: Final settlement and data posting to Ethereum L1 create a variable fee floor. This matters for DeFi protocols like Aave and Uniswap V3 where security guarantees justify higher, L1-pegged costs.

ERC-20 fee abstraction: Users can pay fees in stablecoins (USDC) or the app's own token via systems like EIP-4337 Account Abstraction. This matters for mass-market dApps aiming to abstract away crypto complexity for end-users.

Fixed, sub-penny transaction costs: Fees are deterministic and typically under $0.001, paid in SOL. This is ideal for high-frequency micro-transactions like gaming, social tipping, and decentralized order books. The model provides cost certainty for applications requiring thousands of user ops.

No user-controlled fee bidding: During congestion, transactions are dropped rather than prioritized by fee. This can lead to poor user experience and failed transactions, requiring complex client-side retry logic. Projects must implement their own reliability layers (e.g., Jito bundles) for critical operations.

Diverse, customizable fee models: Rollups like Arbitrum, Optimism, and zkSync offer EIP-1559-style fee markets and can innovate (e.g., Blast's native yield). Fees are paid in ETH or the rollup's native token. This provides a familiar, auction-based UX for DeFi power users and enterprises.

Variable L1 Data Publishing costs: Final settlement fees are exposed to Ethereum mainnet gas volatility. This adds unpredictability for rollup sequencers and can cause periodic fee spikes for end-users. Applications requiring absolute cost stability must implement complex hedging or subsidy mechanisms.

Fixed, minimal cost per transaction: Fees are denominated in lamports (1 SOL = 1B lamports) and are typically <$0.001 for simple transfers. This model provides cost certainty for high-frequency applications like DEX arbitrage, NFT minting, and gaming micro-transactions.

Unified liquidity and state: Applications like Jupiter DEX, Magic Eden, and Drift Protocol operate on a single, global state. Users avoid the bridging costs, delays, and security risks associated with moving assets between multiple Ethereum rollups, simplifying the user experience for cross-protocol interactions.

Fee spikes during congestion: Rollups like Arbitrum, Optimism, and Base inherit Ethereum's fee market dynamics. While base fees are lower than L1, they can surge during network events (e.g., major NFT drops, airdrops). This is a critical consideration for applications requiring stable operating costs.

Multiple token fee payments and bridging overhead: Users often pay fees in the rollup's native gas token (e.g., ETH on Arbitrum) or via paymasters like Biconomy or Pimlico. Managing funds across OP Stack, ZK Stack, and Arbitrum Orbit chains adds operational complexity and hidden costs versus a single-chain model.

Fees pay for Ethereum-level security: A portion of every rollup transaction fee ultimately secures the batch on Ethereum L1. This is the trade-off for applications like Aave, Uniswap, and Compound that prioritize capital preservation and maximal decentralization over absolute lowest cost.

Potential for localized congestion costs: While base fees are fixed, users can pay priority fees to jump the queue during high demand (e.g., pumping meme coins on Raydium). This can create a winner-take-all environment for block space, similar to Ethereum but at a smaller scale, impacting cost predictability.