Fees and rent

Fee model#

• Every signature costs a fixed 5,000 lamports (testnet value, re-assessed before mainnet). A simple transfer carries one signature.
• 50% of each fee is burned; the rest goes to the validator.
• When blocks are busy, transactions can add prioritization fees (a compute-unit price times the units used) to be scheduled first. On an idle testnet the base fee alone lands immediately.
• There is no gas-price auction and no EIP-1559 base fee: the signature fee does not move with demand.

Recommended settings#

On Testnet, send transactions with default fees — they confirm without prioritization. Only set a compute-unit price if your transactions are being dropped under load.

import { ComputeBudgetProgram } from "@solana/web3.js";

// Optional: only needed under congestion.
const prioritize = ComputeBudgetProgram.setComputeUnitPrice({ microLamports: 1 });

Rent#

Every account must hold a minimum KYV balance to stay alive (rent-exempt); the minimum depends on the account's size. Query it per account instead of guessing:

const minBalance = await connection.getMinimumBalanceForRentExemption(accountSizeInBytes);

Token accounts are accounts too: a new ATA needs its rent covered at creation. The faucet pays this for tKUSD claims; when your own app creates accounts for users, pay it the same way.

Typical costs#

Approximate, in KYV, which has no monetary value. 5,000 lamports = 0.000005 KYV.