# Chain congestion

### **What is chain congestion and how does it impact its users?**

When blockchain networks (like Arbitrum or Base) become busy, they can experience periods of **chain congestion.** This can lead to higher transaction fees (gas costs), transaction failures, or long confirmation times. While **gTrade** is designed to operate efficiently, network congestion can cause frustrating experiences that are outside our app’s control, ie:

* Gas fees rise as users compete to get their transactions included.
* Transactions may be delayed, reverted or not included at all if gas fees are too low.
* User experience degrades, especially during periods of extremely high network activity.

### How to manage chain congestion?

* **Monitor network conditions** ⇒ when platform detects unusual congestion or high gas prices on the underlying chain, gTrade will display various alerts, banners, tooltips, and notices to inform you of the situation.

<figure><img src="/files/rSBgvba7LmnFA0BEFYGV" alt=""><figcaption></figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="/files/qi3FTQleyqiGa7qaTf4z" alt=""><figcaption></figcaption></figure>

* **Adjust Gas Settings** ⇒ you can access this option in the footer (bottom-right corner). Consider changing to `Aggresive` setting, but pay attention to increased transaction cost (estimate costs can be found in the tooltip).

<figure><img src="/files/puNyLjlCsgqavq0IeRRq" alt=""><figcaption></figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="/files/xAjE6PPsCZsRO8HUOEpM" alt=""><figcaption></figcaption></figure>

* **Change Your RPC Endpoint** ⇒ an RPC in the context of blockchains is the gateway between your wallet and the blockchain. Since the default ones tend to get slow and unresponsive, oftentimes it's better to switch to a faster one, [www.chainlist.org](/master.md#website-links) provides both a list to do this and can automate it for you.


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