Base gas, one invoice away
Fund a fresh Base wallet with just enough ETH for gas. Pay an XMR or Lightning invoice and it lands on Base in minutes.
Native ETH gas on Base
Base is an OP Stack layer 2 incubated by Coinbase and secured by Ethereum. Gas on Base is paid in ETH, which surprises people who arrive with USDC: a Coinbase withdrawal to Base, a Farcaster tip, or a Zora mint reward can leave you with tokens on chain ID 8453 and no way to move them, because the wallet has no ETH to pay the fee.
1gwei.dev fixes that without a Coinbase account. Pay a small invoice in Monero or Bitcoin Lightning and our hot wallet sends native ETH on Base to the address you specify. No exchange, no bridge from mainnet, no identity check. The payout is a normal Base transaction you can watch on Basescan.
Base fees are low, so a top-up between 0.00005 and 0.01 ETH covers a lot of activity. The checkout reads the live Base gas price and shows how many sends, token transfers, and swaps each preset buys before you commit.
Base at a glance
- Network
- Base, OP Stack optimistic rollup on Ethereum
- Chain ID
- 8453
- Gas token
- Native ETH (USDC on Base does not pay gas)
- Explorer
- basescan.org
- Developer
- Coinbase, on the Optimism OP Stack
- Block time
- About 2 seconds
- Order size
- 0.00005 to 0.01 ETH
When you need gas on Base
- Withdrew USDC from Coinbase to Base and the wallet cannot move it because it has no ETH.
- Received tokens through Farcaster, Zora, or a Base airdrop into an address with zero gas.
- Want to use Base without opening a Coinbase account or completing identity verification.
- Funding a throwaway Base wallet for a mint, a claim, or a test without linking it to an exchange.
Base gas questions
Do I pay gas on Base in ETH or in USDC?
In ETH. USDC is widely used on Base but it cannot pay transaction fees. A wallet with USDC and no ETH is stuck until it receives native ETH on chain ID 8453.
I withdrew USDC from Coinbase to Base and the wallet cannot move it. What now?
The wallet needs ETH for gas. Order a Base top-up to that address, wait for the Basescan confirmation, and the USDC becomes spendable. This is the single most common Base order.
Do I need a Coinbase account to get ETH on Base?
No. Base is a public network; Coinbase built it but does not gate it. Pay with Monero or Lightning here and the ETH arrives at any Base address with no account anywhere.
Is Base the same as Ethereum mainnet?
No. Base is a separate layer-2 chain that settles to Ethereum. Your address is the same on both, but the balances are separate. ETH sent on Base is only spendable on Base.
Why does my wallet show 0 ETH after the Base payout confirmed?
Almost always because the wallet is looking at a different network. Switch the wallet to Base (chain ID 8453, RPC mainnet.base.org) and the balance appears. The transaction hash on Basescan is the proof of delivery.
How fast does ETH arrive on Base?
Base produces a block roughly every two seconds, so once your Monero or Lightning payment confirms the ETH is usually spendable within a minute. Lightning confirms in seconds, Monero in about ten seconds.