Two Receipts: What a Transaction Really Costs on HeLa
I pulled real HeLa mainnet receipts to see what people actually pay. Sending HLUSD wallet to wallet costs about 2 cents; a small contract call about a third of a cent. Both priced in a dollar token. Here's why they differ, and what you get back when a call fails.
People ask me what a transaction costs on HeLa. The honest answer is "it depends what you're doing", which is useless. So I opened the block explorer on the morning of 20 October 2026 and collected receipts instead.
Two of them tell the whole story.
Receipt 1: sending HLUSD to a friend
A plain wallet-to-wallet send of HLUSD, HeLa's dollar token (view on HeLaScan):
| Line item | Value |
|---|---|
| Gas used | 211,141 |
| Gas price | 100 gwei |
| Fee | 0.0211141 HLUSD |
About 2.1 US cents, at the 1:1 peg HeLa's docs describe for HLUSD (HeLa docs: What is HLUSD?).
Receipt 2: a small contract call
A small, zero-value call to a smart contract (view on HeLaScan). In full disclosure, it's an automated wallet claiming from a faucet contract, which it does over and over. It's not a person buying coffee, but it's a real receipt:
| Line item | Value |
|---|---|
| Gas limit (what the sender allowed) | 28,750 |
| Gas used | 28,577 |
| Gas price | 100 gwei |
| Fee | 0.0028577 HLUSD |
About a third of a cent. The maths is the one HeLa's docs give: fee = gas used × gas price (HeLa docs: Estimate Gas).
In the day leading up to that morning, sends into contracts cost anywhere from about 0.3 to 2.6 cents, depending on how much work the contract did and the gas price the sender chose.
Wait, sending costs more than calling a contract?
Yes, and this surprised me too.
On Ethereum, a plain ETH transfer uses 21,000 units of gas (ethereum.org), usually the cheapest thing you can do. On HeLa, a native HLUSD transfer is charged a flat 210,000 gas by the runtime itself (oasis-sdk/runtime-sdk/modules/evm/src/lib.rs, the transfer function). Add a little overhead and you get the ~211,000 on Receipt 1.
So on HeLa, a simple contract call can cost less than a plain send. If you're building something that moves money often, that's worth knowing before you design your flows.
The part that doesn't move: the currency
Here's what is genuinely different from most chains. On Ethereum, you pay fees in ETH, and the price of ETH moves. On HeLa, HeLa's docs say "all gas fees on HeLa Chain are paid in HLUSD" (HeLa docs: Benefits of HLUSD).
So the 2.1 cents on Receipt 1 is 2.1 cents. It doesn't become 3 cents next week because a token rallied. If you run a shop, a payroll or a loyalty app, you can put "network fee: ~2¢" on a receipt and mean it.
And the price per unit?
That morning the explorer suggested 100 gwei for slow, average and fast alike, and the public RPC quoted the same (helascan.io stats, read 2026-10-20). The network was well under 1% busy.
That's not a law of nature. Senders can choose to pay more, and some do: I've seen plain sends go through at 120 gwei (example). With the network that quiet, though, paying extra doesn't buy you anything. The explorer's three tiers being identical is a snapshot of a calm road, not a promise there will never be traffic.
Change back when a contract call fails
One more thing I like. HeLa holds your full gas limit up front and refunds what you didn't use. HeLa's docs admit an early version had a gap: when a transaction failed, the whole amount was kept, "even the part that wasn't used" (HeLa docs: Estimate Gas).
I checked the runtime code rather than taking the docs' word for it. When a smart-contract call reverts, the runtime charges only the gas actually burned and refunds the rest (oasis-sdk/runtime-sdk/modules/evm/src/lib.rs, with the refund paid out in oasis-sdk/runtime-sdk/src/modules/accounts/mod.rs). That logic is in every tagged HeLa mainnet runtime release since at least v1.0.8. HeLa's runtime is built on the open-source Oasis SDK, whose EVM module uses the same refund mechanism (oasisprotocol/oasis-sdk).
Receipt 2 shows the happy path: allowed 28,750, used 28,577, charged for 28,577.
Q&A
So what does a transaction cost on HeLa? From my receipts: about 2 cents to send HLUSD wallet to wallet, and from about a third of a cent up for contract calls, depending on how much work they do. All paid in HLUSD.
Can I pay more to go faster? You can set a higher gas price, and some senders do. On the morning I checked, the network was so quiet there was nothing to gain from it.
Is 100 gwei fixed? I'm not claiming that. It's what the explorer and RPC quoted on 20 October 2026. Check helascan.io for today's number.
Can I try this without real money? Yes. HeLa testnet (chain ID 666888) also uses HLUSD (HeLa docs: Network Endpoints), and there's a faucet at testnet-faucet.helachain.com (HeLa docs: Testnet Faucet).