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What is Wei in Ethereum?
What is Wei in Ethereum?
Published on
July 8, 2024
, 3min read

What is Wei in Ethereum?

In Ethereum, "wei" is the smallest denomination of Ether (ETH), the cryptocurrency used within the Ethereum network.

Key Points About Wei

1. Basic Unit of Ether:

Wei is the smallest unit of Ether, similar to how cents are the smallest unit of a dollar. However, unlike dollars, where 100 cents equal one dollar, one Ether is equal to 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 (10^18) wei.

2. Purpose:

Using wei allows for extremely fine granularity in financial calculations, which is essential for smart contracts and micro-transactions. This precision is critical because Ethereum transactions often involve very small amounts of Ether.

3. Naming Convention:

The use of wei as a unit name follows the tradition of naming Ethereum units after prominent figures in cryptography and computer science. Wei is named after Wei Dai, a computer scientist known for his contributions to the development of cryptographic currencies.

Ethereum Denominations

Ethereum's denominations and their equivalent values in wei:

Practical Use

When dealing with Ethereum transactions or smart contracts, amounts are often specified in wei to avoid rounding errors that can occur with floating-point arithmetic. For example, gas prices, which are fees paid to execute transactions, are typically denominated in Gwei (gigawei).

Manoj Narayan
Manoj Narayan is the co-founder and CEO of Proxikle. He has been an active collaborator in the Web3 space for 8 years since 2016 and has spearheaded and grown various influential Bitcoin communities and played pivotal roles in building multi-million dollar projects in the Solana & Fantom Ecosystem throughout the years. Prior to his current endeavors, he honed his expertise as a software engineer at renowned global organizations such as Citigroup and Viavi Solutions.
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