Suffering from gas problems?… Maybe it’s time for a DEX change

Scott Debevic
4 min readSep 6, 2021

Gas fees on Uniswap are unbelievably high. I thought the point of blockchain and crypto-assets was to cut costs and reduce middleman fees? And while EIP-1559 was marketed as a way to potentially reduce insane Ethereum costs, it appears that the opposite has happened.

Woman squeezing her stomach in pain symbolizing high gas fees on Ethereum.
Picture by Andres Ayrton on Pexels

Normal crypto investors are now either forced to pay obscene gas fees on the Ethereum network or find alternatives quickly. For this article, I wanted to give an example of how high the Uniswap gas fees are. Unfortunately, the cost for approving Uniswap to access my $19.5 in DAI is .008 ETH or over $31!

This is only the first step in a two-step process. Yesterday, I looked at harvesting a staking reward on Ethereum and the gas fee was going to be over $200. Luckily, Ethereum now has competitors that have robust digital exchanges (DEX) with fees that are a fraction of Ethereum’s.

I am going to go over some of the primary DEXes in other platforms with smart contracts that I am using. I will include links to other articles with instructions on how to interact with these networks.

Keep in mind that there are multiple DEXes on most ecosystems. And some DEXes, like Sushi Swap, can be used on multiple platforms.

Polygon Network: Quickswap

How to use Polygon Network

Pros: Low transaction fees (less than $0.01). Features many of the ERC20 tokens that live on Ethereum (Click here to view coins on Polygon). Allows limit buy and sell orders. Fast transactions. Has over 50 LP farming pairs paying out rewards in Quick, the native token for Quickswap.

Cons: In order to get crypto on the Polygon network, you need to bridge it from Ethereum. The bridging process requires ETH and ETH gas fees.

Binance Smart Chain: Pancake Swap

How to use Binance Smart Chain

Pros: Low transaction fees (typically less than $1.00). Gives access to a unique ecosystem with some overlapping projects that are on Ethereum (Click here to view coins on Binance Smart Chain). Fast transactions. Has the highest LP farming pairs paying out rewards in Cake, the native token for Pancake Swap.

Scott Debevic

My goal is growing wealth and earning passive income. Mainly focused on Bitcoin and crypto. Feel free to contact me at: scottdebevic@gmail.com