Crypto Fees: Why Can’t I Know the Cost In Advance?

Recently, one of our users submitted a transaction on the Ethereum network but set the gas fee too low. As a result, they had to wait a long time for confirmation.

After realizing what caused the delay, the user made a surprisingly sharp observation — something rarely discussed:

“Why is it that in crypto, you never know upfront how much you’ll have to pay just to move your own money? How did crypto even become popular with this kind of fee? If PayPal told users their transfer fees would be unknown until sending, no one would use it!”

That’s a very fair point! I also wouldn’t use a payment system where sending one dollar could cost either one cent — or one hundred — and both outcomes are equally possible.

And yet, I do use cryptocurrencies. I’m okay with this fee model — but only because I’ve gotten used to it. It’s always been that way in crypto. But for the average financial consumer, this unpredictability might feel completely unacceptable.

Still, there are solutions. And in this article, I’ll look at some of them more closely.

Fee-Free Cryptocurrencies

XNO

Anyone who has ever searched for the most economical way to send crypto has likely come across Nano ($XNO). This cryptocurrency was specifically designed to eliminate transaction fees for users.

To include a transaction in Nano’s global ledger, it must be confirmed by representative nodes (reps) — accounts that have received voting power from other users. Unlike validators in most other networks, these reps confirm transactions not for profit, but to maintain the stability and security of the ecosystem that they themselves rely on.

Typically, the reps are large XNO holders who have a vested interest in keeping the network honest and functional. If users notice that a representative node behaves dishonestly — like approving conflicting transactions — they can instantly revoke their votes. That node will immediately lose its confirming power.

While vote revocation requires manual action, modern wallets notify users when their chosen representative becomes unreliable. So users don’t need to constantly monitor the network themselves.

MIOTA

The IOTA network architecture doesn’t separate “users” and “validators”. Instead, every participant making a transaction with MIOTA (native coin of the IOTA network) also contributes to the validation of others’ transactions. This makes the network self-regulating.

To get your own transaction processed, you must confirm two other transactions. Yours then becomes a successor to those two. If those earlier transactions break network rules, they’ll be rejected — along with yours.

In other words, IOTA doesn’t rely on miners adding full blocks to the ledger. Instead, each new transaction — issued by a regular user — validates two previous ones. Aside from that, it works similarly to other cryptocurrencies: each node independently checks all new confirmed records before accepting them into its own copy of the distributed ledger. Any record that contradicts the network’s consensus will be rejected.

NEO

Basic transactions involving the NEO cryptocurrency can also be processed without a network fee. “Basic” means those that don’t interact with smart contracts. For example:

• You go to the website rabbit.io to exchange NEO for BTC (or any other cryptocurrency),
• You enter the amount and the address where you want to receive BTC,
• You click the Swap button and see the address to which you need to send your NEO.

Sending coins to that address doesn’t require any network fee. This is a fundamental principle of the Neo network: sending NEO from one user to another incurs no fee.

However, if you want to make a trade on a decentralized exchange — where all actions are performed through smart contracts — you’ll have to pay a network fee. The same applies if you’re sending not NEO itself but another token issued on the Neo blockchain. These fees fund the network’s miners and ensure that new blocks are added to the blockchain.

TRX, STEEM, HIVE

The blockchains of Tron, Steem, and Hive follow a principle similar to that of Neo: transactions involving the network’s native coins can be processed without any transaction fee, as long as they don’t interact with smart contracts. So, if you’re exchanging TRX for STEEM (or vice versa) on rabbit.io, you can do so without paying blockchain fees. However, when using decentralized applications or transferring tokens other than the base coins, network fees do apply.

That said, there’s a key difference between TRX, STEEM, HIVE and NEO. While all transfers between NEO users are completely free, Tron, Steem, and Hive impose limits on free transfers of their native coins. These limits are renewable. For example, on the Tron network, the limit resets every 24 hours. A regular user typically gets enough daily bandwidth for about 19 free transactions — more than enough for everyday use of TRX as a payment method.

Cryptocurrencies with Fixed Transaction Fees

In Bitcoin, Ethereum, and many other blockchains, transaction fees are determined by demand for block space: the more users want to include their transactions in the next block, the more they have to pay. That’s how the law of supply and demand works when supply (block space) is strictly limited.

However, there are cryptocurrencies that manage to maintain a fixed fee rate.

• Ada and all tokens on the Cardano blockchain. A fee is required to transfer them, and the formula for calculating that fee is publicly known in advance. It’s available on the Cardano Foundation website. Technically, users can choose to pay more, but there’s no benefit in doing so. Transactions are processed in the order they’re created, regardless of the fee amount.
• HBAR and all tokens on the Hedera Hashgraph. The network operates with fixed fees set by the Hedera Governing Council, and it doesn’t support prioritization by fee bidding. Importantly, these fees are fixed not in the native coin but in US dollars. So when the price of HBAR rises, users pay fewer coins; when it falls, they pay more. This solves a common problem in most crypto networks: when the token price goes up, the USD value of the fee also increases, making it more expensive to use the network.
• Toncoin and all tokens on The Open Network (TON). This blockchain also uses a strict fee calculation formula, and users don’t even have the technical ability to overpay. The cost of any operation can be calculated in advance.

In Cardano as well as in Hedera, when the network is overloaded, there’s no way to expedite a transaction — even in urgent situations. Traditional crypto networks like Bitcoin and Ethereum allow users to pay a higher fee to speed things up. But in Cardano and Hedera, you simply have to wait your turn.

While both Cardano and Hedera offer high throughput, their capacity isn’t infinite. Cardano has already seen moments when queues became so long that users had to wait several hours for their transactions to be included in a block. Hedera hasn’t experienced such delays yet, but that doesn’t mean they’re impossible. If the network sees mass adoption — especially by AI agents making microtransactions for every bit of data — it’s only a matter of time before performance limits are reached.

Out of all the examples, TON is the only one where this fee model is backed by a technical solution. As network load increases, TON splits into more working segments — shardchains. This allows transactions to be distributed and processed at incredibly high speeds. According to TON’s architecture, the blockchain can be divided into over a trillion shards, each handling a portion of the transaction load. In theory, this eliminates the shortage of block space and removes the need for fee escalation altogether.

Why Keep Overpaying?

There are already blockchain networks in operation today that offer predictable, fixed, or even zero transaction fees. For users who value the ability to access and move their funds at any time without sacrificing a significant portion of them to transaction costs, these networks provide a viable solution.

The fact that we continue to rely on networks with unpredictable fees is largely a matter of habit. But at any moment, we can try something new.

All the cryptocurrencies mentioned in this article are available for swaps at the best rates on rabbit.io.