Gate 2025 Year-End Community Gala Solana has been promoting its "cheaper than Ethereum," but recently it doesn't seem to be the case.
I tried sending the same tokens using Jupiter Move Wallet and Phantom. The gas fees displayed by both are different. Naturally, I chose the cheaper one. But I still ended up paying the higher fee shown by Jupiter. This in itself is confusing. Then in Jupiter Ultra Swap, it says "gas-free," but each swap costs around $0.24. So what does "gas-free" really mean here? What I respect about Ethereum is that it never exceeds the estimated fee. If anything, you pay less. On Solana, the base fee might be very cheap, but once you consider priority fees, compute units, routing, and network congestion, the actual cost only becomes clear after the transaction. That’s the frustrating part. With recent Ethereum updates, fees have become clearer and cheaper. So is Solana cheap? On paper, yes. But in actual use, it’s not always the case. This isn’t hate. Just pointing out the user experience issues that Solana really needs to address.
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Gate 2025 Year-End Community Gala Solana has been promoting its "cheaper than Ethereum," but recently it doesn't seem to be the case.
I tried sending the same tokens using Jupiter Move Wallet and Phantom.
The gas fees displayed by both are different. Naturally, I chose the cheaper one.
But I still ended up paying the higher fee shown by Jupiter.
This in itself is confusing.
Then in Jupiter Ultra Swap, it says "gas-free," but each swap costs around $0.24. So what does "gas-free" really mean here?
What I respect about Ethereum is that it never exceeds the estimated fee. If anything, you pay less.
On Solana, the base fee might be very cheap, but once you consider priority fees, compute units, routing, and network congestion, the actual cost only becomes clear after the transaction. That’s the frustrating part.
With recent Ethereum updates, fees have become clearer and cheaper.
So is Solana cheap? On paper, yes.
But in actual use, it’s not always the case.
This isn’t hate. Just pointing out the user experience issues that Solana really needs to address.