Gas & Fees
How gas works on Mandala, what users pay for, and where the cost actually goes.
Gas on Mandala is paid in KPG (Kepeng), not ETH. KPG is the native token of the chain; there is no separate fee token. If you have used Arbitrum One, the fee model is the same shape, with two changes: the units are KPG instead of ETH, and the L1 component is dramatically smaller because of AnyTrust.
What you pay for
Every Mandala transaction pays two things, bundled into one fee.
L2 execution fee. The cost of running your transaction's compute and storage on Mandala. Same shape as Ethereum gas, denominated in KPG-wei. EVM opcodes have the standard gas costs. ArbOS adds a small set of Arbitrum-specific operations.
L1 batch posting fee. The cost of getting your transaction back to Ethereum. The batch poster pays Ethereum gas to submit a batch header (and a DAC certificate) to the L1 SequencerInbox, and that cost is amortized across all transactions in the batch. Each user pays their share.
In rollup-mode chains, the L1 fee is the dominant cost: most of it is paying Ethereum to store full transaction calldata. In Mandala's AnyTrust mode, the L1 fee shrinks because only the batch header lands on L1; the bulk of the data lives in the DAC. This is the order-of-magnitude saving over standard rollups.
Denomination conventions
Gas prices in tooling (wallets, block explorers, ethers, viem) are typically labelled in "gwei." On Mandala, those numbers represent KPG-gwei, not ETH-gwei. The unit symbol does not change; the unit's underlying token does.
- 1 KPG = 1018 KPG-wei.
- 1 KPG-gwei = 109 KPG-wei.
- A "20 gwei" gas price on Mandala means 20 KPG-gwei = 0.00000002 KPG per gas.
If your tooling shows the gas price as "gwei" without a token label, assume it means KPG.
Don't read KPG-denominated fees as ETH
A gas estimate of "0.0001" on Mandala means 0.0001 KPG, not 0.0001 ETH. KPG and ETH have different USD values; budget for them separately.
A worked example
For a basic ERC-20 transfer:
| Step | Value |
|---|---|
Gas used (typical ERC-20 transfer) | ~50,000 |
| Gas price | varies with traffic and L1 base fee |
| Total fee | gas used × gas price, denominated in KPG |
These numbers are illustrative. The chain's actual gas price changes with L1 base fee, traffic, and batch posting cost. Use a wallet's live estimate before sending; do not budget production costs from this table.
Fee distribution
Fees collected by the chain are split between:
- L1 reimbursement to the batch poster, covering Ethereum gas spent posting batches and DAC certificates.
- L2 reimbursement to the sequencer and validators, covering operating cost.
- A protocol-level surplus that goes to the chain treasury.
The exact split and what the treasury does with surplus KPG are part of the broader tokenomics, which the Learn section stays out of by design.
Read more on Arbitrum
Arbitrum's gas and fees reference covers the full Arbitrum fee model, including the L2 execution component, the L1 amortization formula, and ArbOS's specific fee accounting. The same model applies to Mandala, with KPG instead of ETH.