What Is Gwei?
Also known as: Gigawei, Shannon, Nanoether
In short
Gwei is a subunit of ETH, Ethereum's native currency; 1 gwei equals 1 billion wei, or 0.000000001 ETH, and it is used especially to express gas prices.
ETH can be divided up to 18 decimal places. The smallest unit is the wei, and 1 ETH equals a billion times a billion wei. Because writing fees in wei would require very long numbers, gwei, short for “giga-wei,” is used for gas prices. For example, the statement “gas price is 15 gwei” means that 15 billion wei is paid for each unit of gas used.
The total fee of a transaction is the amount of gas used multiplied by the gas price in gwei. For a simple ETH transfer that uses 21,000 gas, if the gas price is 10 gwei, the fee is 210,000 gwei, or 0.00021 ETH. Wallets and block explorers usually show the network's current fee level in gwei.
Ethereum's unit names pay homage to pioneers of cryptography and computer science; gwei's other name is “shannon,” after Claude Shannon, the founder of information theory. It can be thought of as analogous to the satoshi unit on Bitcoin; in everyday use, units other than ETH, gwei, and wei are rarely encountered.
Last updated: · This content is for information purposes only and is not investment advice.