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Gas lanes & calculated stats

EthGasStation turns raw Ethereum fee data into a few actionable views used across the current app:

  • dashboard lane cards
  • dashboard confidence and trend summaries
  • Gas Explorer charts
  • alert thresholds and timing decisions
  • public widgets and landing previews

This page explains the meaning of those values and how to read them in the product.

Gas lanes in the current app​

The current UI uses three lane labels:

  • Slow
  • Average
  • Fast

These are decision lanes, not protocol-native fields. They are derived from recent chain activity so users can choose a lower-cost or faster-inclusion posture without reading raw block data directly.

In UI copy and charts, values are usually shown in gwei. Backend storage and APIs may use wei.

Current snapshot fields​

The live snapshot used in the app includes lane and fee context such as:

  • lowPrice
  • averagePrice
  • highPrice
  • basePrice
  • priorityPrice
  • updatedAt

At a high level:

  • lowPrice maps to the low/slow lane
  • averagePrice maps to the middle/average lane
  • highPrice maps to the fast lane
  • basePrice is the latest EIP-1559 base fee
  • priorityPrice is the priority-fee component exposed separately for decision support

How lane prices are computed​

EthGasStation processes recent on-chain transactions and block-level metrics, then derives lane values from sampled activity over a rolling window. Outlier handling is used so a few extreme tips do not distort the entire snapshot.

For the current widget and lane snapshot, the system uses recent processed blocks and summarizes the market into a lower lane, a middle lane, and a faster lane.

The exact values are stored in the backend and surfaced through the current stats endpoints used by the app and API.

Base fee vs priority fee​

For EIP-1559 transactions, the displayed total cost can be thought of as:

  • Base fee: protocol-controlled and changes block to block
  • Priority fee: sender-supplied tip used to compete for inclusion

EthGasStation exposes both because the app increasingly uses more than a single gas number. In particular:

  • the dashboard uses these values to summarize current market quality
  • Gas Explorer exposes percentile-based priority fee context
  • alerts and send decisions are easier to reason about when you separate base fee from tip pressure

Priority-fee analysis becomes more important in volatile periods, which is why Gas Explorer exposes percentile views such as p50, p75, p90, p95, and p99.

Freshness and update frequency​

The app treats freshness as a first-class signal.

Examples:

  • the dashboard confidence model considers freshness
  • overview metrics report an updateFrequencySec value
  • current snapshot responses include updatedAt

If values look stale, the first thing to check is whether block processing has advanced recently.

Explorer and historical metrics​

Gas Explorer and advanced metrics build on more than the three visible lanes.

The current app uses:

  • block history for charting
  • metrics over selected windows
  • priority-fee percentile series
  • gas-used-ratio series
  • overview summaries for confidence and confirmation timing

This is why Gas Explorer can show:

  • lane-like trends over time
  • percentile spreads
  • market anomalies
  • compare mode
  • CSV export

Practical interpretation​

  • Use Slow when cost matters more than speed.
  • Use Average as the default reference point for most alert thresholds.
  • Use Fast when you need quicker inclusion and can tolerate higher cost.
  • Look at priority-fee spread, not only the middle lane, during volatile periods.

If you need exact field and endpoint behavior, continue with the API overview.