People use the words "gas" and "fee" as if they're the same thing. They're not. And to make it more confusing, QRL's two chains charge fees in completely different ways. This guide untangles both — first gas vs fee, then QRL Legacy vs QRL 2.0.
Gas vs fee: work vs money
The simplest way to keep them apart is a fuel analogy:
| Term | Analogy | What it really is |
|---|---|---|
| Gas | Litres of fuel a trip burns | How much work a transaction needs |
| Gas price | Price per litre | What you pay per unit of work |
| Fee | The total bill | The money that leaves your balance |
So the one line to remember:
Gas is an amount of work. A fee is an amount of money.
They're linked by a multiplication:
fee = gas used × gas price
A plain transfer does little work, so it uses little gas; a smart-contract call does more work, so it uses more gas. Either way, the fee is just that gas multiplied by the price per gas.
One crucial caveat before we go further: gas only exists on QRL 2.0. It's an EVM concept. That's exactly why the two chains differ.
QRL Legacy: a fee is just a fee
QRL Legacy is the original Proof-of-Work chain. It has no smart contracts — only a fixed set of transaction types — so every transaction does roughly the same, predictable amount of work. There's nothing variable to meter, so there's no gas.
Instead you pay a simple, flat-style fee directly in shor, and that fee goes to the miner who produces the block.
On QRL Legacy: fee = fee. There is no gas, no multiplication, and nothing is burned.
QRL 2.0: the fee is built from gas
QRL 2.0 is the EVM-compatible Proof-of-Stake successor. Because it runs arbitrary smart contracts, it must charge by how much work you do — hence gas. It uses the modern EIP-1559 fee model (the same one Ethereum uses), where the gas price has two parts:
On QRL 2.0: gas price = base fee + tip, and fee = gas used × (base fee + tip).
- Base fee — set automatically by the protocol based on how full recent blocks are (it rises when the network is busy, falls when it's quiet). The base fee is permanently burned — destroyed and removed from the total supply forever.
- Priority tip — an optional extra you add to jump the queue. The tip goes to the validator who includes your transaction.
So on QRL 2.0 two things happen to your fee that never happen on Legacy: the price moves with demand, and a chunk of every fee (the base fee) is burned rather than paid to anyone.
Side by side
| QRL Legacy | QRL 2.0 | |
|---|---|---|
| Gas? | No | Yes (EVM work meter) |
| Fee model | Flat fee | gas used × (base fee + tip) |
| Price moves with demand? | No | Yes (EIP-1559) |
| Who gets paid | Miner | Validator (the tip only) |
| Base fee | — | Burned (removed from supply) |
| Paid in | shor | Quanta |
Why the burn matters
Because QRL 2.0 burns the base fee of every transaction, heavy usage actually removes coins from circulation. On a busy chain this can offset — or even outpace — new issuance, making fees a genuine part of the supply story. You can watch this directly on the gas & fees dashboard and the fee-burned chart. QRL Legacy has no burn, so its fees never affect supply.
Where to go next
- Gas & fees dashboard — the live numbers behind this article.
- QRL Legacy vs QRL 2.0 — the full two-chain comparison.
- Units: Shor, Quanta and Planck — the units fees are paid in.
- Tokenomics and supply — how the burn fits the bigger picture.