Costs and gas

Network fees

Every transaction pays its gas in L1: the gas it uses times the gas price. The figures on this page use a base fee of 50 gwei, at which one million gas costs 0.05 L1. COLLAB reads the current gas price from the RPC endpoint when it shows a fee, so the amounts on screen follow the network.

Measured gas for common actions, on GenesisL1's gas rules (each its own transaction):

The logo and the description dominate: storing a new 32-byte word costs about 22,100 gas, and rewriting one about 5,000. A real 128 × 128 logo is usually 5 to 30 KB. Description text that is not plain ASCII costs a little more to check. More figures for representatives' edits are in Representatives.

Other actions, such as swaps, liquidity, token launches, sealed data and models, depend on what they do; your wallet estimates them and shows the fee before you sign. Before your wallet opens, COLLAB also simulates the transaction and stops if it would fail.

A failed transaction still pays

GenesisL1 charges every transaction the larger of the gas it used and half its gas limit, even when the transaction fails. (This is Ethermint's minimum gas multiplier of 0.5, and GenesisL1's receipts show it.)

• A transaction that succeeds pays the gas it used: with the limits COLLAB sets, that is always more than half the limit.
• A transaction that fails pays at least half its gas limit, whatever it used before failing.

For an ordinary transaction, the wallet's estimate keeps the limit close to the gas needed, so a failure costs at most about what success would. For a large one sent with an explicit limit, half the limit is a lot. The case that matters most: someone watching pending transactions can create a DAO with the web address you chose before yours lands, and yours then fails. For the largest possible creation, whose limit is about 631 million gas, the failure pays about 315 million gas, 15.8 L1 at 50 gwei; for a 64 KB logo with a 16 KB description, a limit of about 71 million, it pays about 35.6 million gas, 1.8 L1. Taking the web address costs the other side about 5.4 million gas, 0.27 L1. The same rule charges the second of two executions of one large proposal in a block.

What COLLAB does about it:

• every transaction it sends with its own gas limit says what a failure would cost before you sign, and the creation wizard always does: "If it fails, for example because someone takes the web address first, GenesisL1 still charges at least half its gas limit: about …";
• the creation wizard checks the web address again just before your wallet opens;
• Execute reads the proposal's state again just before sending.

What you can do: keep logos small (a few KB is plenty at 128 × 128 pixels), and when you create a DAO with a large logo or description, consider creating it without them and letting a representative with the logo and description permissions add them right after. A lost web address then costs only the small creation. A reservation of web addresses that cannot be taken first, and a two-step creation built into the wizard, are planned; see Known limitations.

Large logos and descriptions

A DAO's logo can be up to 512 KB (524,288 bytes) and its description up to 256 KB (262,144 bytes), both stored in the DAO's profile contract and overwritten in place when edited; see Name, web address, logo and description. Sizes near those limits are expensive, and wallets cannot estimate them.

• The estimate cap. Nodes cap gas estimates and read calls at their json-rpc gas cap, 25 million gas by default. A wallet therefore cannot estimate a DAO creation with more than about 25 KB of logo and description together (about 20 KB when the text is not plain ASCII), the execution of a proposal or a representative's write of more than about 33 KB of new data (rewrites cost about a quarter), or a submission near the maximum size of a proposal.
• Explicit limits. Above the cap, COLLAB sets the gas limit itself, from a formula built on measured figures: 1.07 to 1.24 times the smallest limit that works, and never more than 990,000,000, just under GenesisL1's block gas limit of 1,000,000,000. The proposal composer does not simulate profile writes that need more than 20 million gas, and says why.
• Your balance. Your wallet must hold enough L1 for the gas limit times the gas price, even though only the gas used is charged on success: about 35 L1 at 50 gwei for the largest transactions. The wizard's fee panel says how much.
• Removing is not free. Clearing a stored word costs about 5,000 gas before refunds, and refunds come back only at the end and at most a fifth of the gas. Removing a 512 KB logo is charged about 66 million gas and needs a limit of about 83 million; removing more than about 150 KB at once is above the estimate cap.
• The block. The largest creation, up to 620 million gas for the description text that is slowest to check, takes more than half a GenesisL1 block, so a block holds at most one of them.
• Your node. A node whose operator set a per-transaction gas cap below these numbers refuses such transactions; use another RPC endpoint for them. See RPC endpoints.
• History. Changed by proposal, a logo or description enters the chain's history three times (the submission, its event and the execution); a representative's direct edit puts it there once and costs less.

Deposits

A proposal needs a deposit in L1 before voting starts. The proposer pays at least the DAO's initial share of the minimum deposit when submitting, and anyone can add the rest. Deposits are refunded after the vote, unless the DAO's rules forfeit them: for a proposal that never reached its minimum, one that missed quorum, one that was vetoed, or a freeze vote that failed, each as the DAO chose. Forfeited deposits go to the treasury or the burn address. No DAO can ask for a minimum deposit above 1,000,000 L1. Details are in Deposits, refunds and penalties. Claiming a refund, adding to a deposit and settling a forfeited one each cost a network fee.

DeSciFi fees

Each pool a trade passes through takes its fee tier from the trade's input: 0.10%, 0.30% or 1.00% in a standard pool, 0.30% or 1.00% in a launch pool. The fees go to the pool's liquidity providers, often a DAO's treasury; DeSciFi has no protocol fee. Adding or removing liquidity, locking it and collecting fees cost only network fees. Price impact is not a fee, but it can cost more than one; the swap ticket shows it before you sign. See Swap on DeSciFi.

CIPNFT and GL1F fees

The outside protocols a DAO uses charge fees of their own, which their administrators set and can change; see Outside admin keys.

• CIPNFT may charge a mint fee, a flat amount plus an amount per byte, which the treasury pays when a proposal mints sealed data; its admin also sets the lowest offer price and the longest offer period. The composer shows the current fee.
• GL1F markets charge a listing fee when a Model NFT is listed: in GL1F it goes to the market's owner, in GL1F Crypto it stays in the market until anyone burns it. GL1F registries charge fees for registering new models.
• Running a model costs what its owner decided: nothing, an optional tip, a fee per run, or the price of an access plan, paid to the model's fee recipient. See Models with GL1F.

COLLAB charges no fee of its own

Creating a DAO, launching a token, funding an airdrop, trading on DeSciFi and every other COLLAB contract cost network fees only: the factory, the token launcher, the airdrop distributor, the DeSciFi contracts and the lock factory take nothing. The server of a COLLAB site only serves pages and data files; it never touches your funds.

Related

• Representatives
• Create a DAO
• Proposals and voting
• Known limitations
• Gas reference
• Wallets, networks and settings