Is there an overview of the fees for each Alchemix interaction?

I'm not sure which junctures in interacting with Alchemix carry fees, and of those, what the fee estimates are. I'm moderately experienced, with both custodial & non-custodial wallets, delegated stake on a few alts, etc. Looking at this, I can't tell if there are fees at the following junctures:

  1. Depositing DAI
  2. Borrowing alUSD against DAI
  3. Staking alUSD
  4. Compounding / Adding staking rewards back into the staking pool
  5. Unstaking alUSD or repaying with alUSD/DAI
  6. Withdrawing funds from the protocol back into Metamask.

Can someone share their experience of what requires fees and what those fees generally run?

Every transaction on the Ethereum network will cost a fee. The amount of the fee is determined by what exactly is required of that transaction, and the cost of the fee is determined by the current gas prices in the network. Here's some documentation from Ethdocs about how fees are calculated https://ethdocs.org/en/latest/contracts-and-transactions/account-types-gas-and-transactions.html

Now as for how much each of those actions cost on Alchemix I personally can't say as I don't know, but I'm sure someone does. Feel free to hit up our discord and ask some of our resident nerds there as well! https://discord.gg/zAd6dzgwaj

    n4n0 Thanks for the response, but I'm still unsure what constitutes a "transaction" within this environment. I'm relatively experienced with Ethereum and understand gas, but I'm looking for specifics around contract complexity and transactions specific to Alchemix.

    Any chance you could fill me in on the numbered points in the original post?

    • n4n0 replied to this.

        StreetCred Everytime your metamask pops up and asks you to confirm something, that's a transaction. Personally I can't tell you the exact gas costs of each function, but if you want to hop over to our discord I'm sure there's some people, maybe even our solidity devs, that are able to answer this.

          19 days later

          I'm referring to the above bullet points. I am not sure which of the above items will trigger a transaction in metamask. my point in starting this thread is I want to have an understanding of what fees come with this so that I can budget accordingly and know how much DAI I'll need for this to be worthwhile.

          I feel like my original post was rather thorough. Maybe just consult that?

            I have raised a question on the Gas fees as well. Presently I am trying out the borrowing process. On depositing the 117Dai, the fee was $24 in Eth.
            Now I want to exchange for alUSD and the gas fee on Metamask is 0,54 Eth. This makes the entire process pointless as the gas fee is way too high.

            I am also asking if Im doing something wrong.

              Timslegacy Exactly! I have an amount of DAI set aside. I'm earning 10% on Celsius with it right now, and I need to calculate how much I need before it's beneficial to move over to Alchemix.

              I love the idea of this platform, but because it's so novel, I can't tell if I'm going to be going through 8 separate high-cost transactions or if a lot of the elements of Alchemix are handled internally once I onboard my DAI.

                Timslegacy Now I want to exchange for alUSD and the gas fee on Metamask is 0,54 Eth. This makes the entire process pointless as the gas fee is way too high.

                0.54 ETH is too high, unless you tried a week ago when the gas prices spiked to 1000+ gwei.

                This is likely Metamask throwing an error because some parameter of the transaction isn't right. When this happens, Metamask will assume the maximum gas limit, resulting in outrageous costs. You should never send a transaction like that, as it will just fail and take your money.

                It might be that you tried to mint alUSD when the alUSD debt ceiling was reached. Or perhaps the "max" button, if you used it, rounded up to a higher number. You could try to slash that "max" number to only 2 or 3 decimals. and see if Metamask gives you a more reasonable gas cost.

                StreetCred I feel like my original post was rather thorough. Maybe just consult that?

                All the points in your OP involve an Ethereum transaction, and hence a gas fee. Unlike Celsius Network, Alchemix is decentralized. You can reasonably assume every step of the process will require a transaction.

                Transactions for smart contracts like this generally range in the 60k to 120k gas limit (Metamask will generally estimate higher, for safety). If you're unsure what gas limit maps to in dollars, you can head to https://ethgasstation.info/calculatorTxV.php and play around with the numbers there.

                As things stand, I'd say the minimum to make Alchemix worth it would be in the 4 figures range, or at the very least high 3 figures. Depositing DAI, minting alUSD and trading alUSD for anything else would likely cost you somewhere between 0.01 ETH and 0.02 ETH right now, or between $25 and $50 at current prices. This is with gas prices being low lately.

                If you're specifically interested in the staking and compounding part (rather than just taking a loan on your future yield), it might be best to look at an aggregator that automatically compounds for you, like pickle.finance.

                    4 days later

                    Timslegacy I have the same issue, sending money to Alchemix was cheap, now trying to Unstake, Withdraw or Borrow prices on gas sky rocket , I want to borrow $800 and gas fee charge is $1000, every time I adjust gas fee on metamask, transaction goes idle. I need help

                    • JRG replied to this.

                        JRGALERT: Transaction Error. Exception thrown in contract code.

                          5 days later

                          Gas prices fell. Probably this is an opportunity. Let's evaluate it.

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