Have great trip to m00n! (OR, a practical demonstration of the current scaling issues facing Ethereum)

4coffeeihadbreakfast
4 min readFeb 15, 2021

Rocketship to m00n needs gas, lots and lots of gas…

Here is my recent experience trying to send AAVE from my wallet to an exchange.

Launch app, select “send payment”, chose AAVE, receive message, “The ETH balance in the parent account is insufficient for network fees”.

AAVE is a ERC-20 coin and in order to transact with ERC-20 coins you need to pay a “gas fee” (Gwei). Translation, I need to buy more ETH (Ether by purchasing the Ethereum coin) in order to send my AAVE back to an exchange.

Currently I have $24 worth of ETH, apparently that is not enough to send $71 worth of AAVE!?

So how much ETH do I need? Luckily I can check with Etherscan

As you can see, there are “low/avg/fast” gas quotes. These prices are based on current network usage, they change frequently and can vary drastically in amount.

Here is a view several minutes later from within the app. Even the lowest gas price displays: “The ETH balance in the parent account is insufficient for network fees”. The prices from Etherscan don’t match up, it looks like AAVE is much more expensive to transact with, at least from within the app?

$69 is the cheapest gas price!? Yikes! let’s explore some other sending options…

MetaMask quoted gas fees are $10–20+ higher for slow/avg/high send choices.

Keep in mind, I am trying to send $71 worth of AAVE!

Gas to m00n costs same/more than rocket!

MEW (MyEtherWallet) fees look much more reasonable at $7, finally!

4coffeeihadbreakfast
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just another crypto enthusiast