The four costs to separate

Cost Meaning Charged when
Mint value Price paid to the mint contract Successful payable transaction
Gas used Units of EVM work consumed Transaction executes, including many reverts
Fee per gas Base fee plus priority fee under EIP-1559 Applied to gas used
Maximum exposure Upper bound derived from gas limit and fee caps Reserved/validated, not necessarily fully spent
Actual network fee = gas used × effective gas price
Maximum fee exposure ≈ gas limit × max fee per gas
Total successful mint cost = mint value + actual network fee

Why the displayed estimate can look high

A gas preset such as 100 Gwei is a fee setting, not the final fee by itself. MintDash combines it with the estimated gas limit. For example, an estimate of 0.028 ETH at 100 Gwei implies roughly 280,000 gas of maximum exposure. The final charge can be lower if less gas is used or the effective gas price is below the cap.

Gas strategy

Route comparison

Route Strength Trade-off Best fit
PUBLIC Fast public propagation and broad visibility Visible in public mempool Competitive FCFS public mints
PRIVATE_RPC Reduced public-mempool exposure Builder dependency; pending may be normal Protected submission when supported
DELEGATION_CONTRACT Batch/delegated execution where compatible Contract compatibility and shared batch risk Supported SeaDrop/delegation flows

Speed metrics

Metric What it measures
Worker pickup Queue delay before execution begins
Sign/pre-sign Time to produce the raw transaction
sendRaw latency RPC response time for submission
Time to seen How quickly an independent observer sees the tx
Time to landed How long until inclusion in a block

A dry run can measure preparation but cannot prove time to seen or time to landed; those require a real broadcast.

Timing