Gas Schedule

Overview

Ashen gas is denominated in abstract cycles and charged by the VM during execution. The canonical schedule lives in the repo at:

• docs/gas-schedules/gas-v1.json (machine-readable)
• docs/gas-schedules/gas-v1.md (human-readable)

This page summarizes the rules and how to read the schedule.

Conventions

• For any per_32b component, compute words32 = ceil(bytes / 32) and charge words32 * per_32b.
• For per_32b_input / per_32b_output, apply the rule to input/output sizes independently.
• Syscalls (including precompiles) always charge a dispatch base plus a syscall-specific cost.

High-Level Structure

The schedule is grouped into three tables:

1. Opcode costs: base cost for ALU, shifts, branches, mul/div.
2. Memory/page costs: warm/cold load/store costs, page penalties, and the predecode byte charge.
3. Syscalls/precompiles: storage, calls, hashing, signature verification, and chain context queries.

Highlights

Storage

• Cold storage reads are more expensive than warm reads.
• Writes are charged on written value size.
• Range scans charge on query bytes and returned data bytes.

Calls

• call and static_call charge on calldata + return bytes.
• create charges on code bytes.

Precompiles

• Hashing: keccak256, sha2_256, blake3
• Signature verification: verify_sig
• VRF verification: verify_vrf_ed25519

Context

Low-cost syscalls for balance and block metadata: gas_limit, balance_of, self_balance, block_hash, block_header.

Worked Example

Storage write of 100 bytes:

• words32 = ceil(100 / 32) = 4
• storage_write = dispatch_base (30) + base (400) + 4 * per_32b (8)
• Total = 30 + 400 + 32 = 462

Full Schedule

Refer to docs/gas-schedules/gas-v1.md for the complete table and docs/gas-schedules/gas-v1.json for the canonical machine-readable source.