> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.autonomi.com/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.autonomi.com/how-it-works/network-economics/gas-fee.md).

# Gas Fee

Autonomi will launch with an ERC-20 network token, the Autonomi Network Token (ANT), utilizing smart contracts for token releases and batching multiple transfers into single transactions for efficient gas usage. At the time of writing, a combination of 4MB chunk size and batching means a 150MB file is currently incurring $0.25 gas fee (noting while the quoted price here is currently indicative that it will be subject to Ethereum network fluctuations).

The decision to use a blockchain payment solution for the early launch phase of Autonomi, along with deployment time to market advantages, to assist in the network’s ability to scale. Ethereum (Autonomi is using a ‘roll-up chain’ - Arbitrum One, an ‘L2’ - see ‘[Glossary of Term](https://docs.autonomi.com/learn/learn-more/glossary)s’ for brief description on both), is a battle-tested blockchain with proven and respected security features.

Until Autonomi has attracted significant levels of participants and data, accessing and benefiting from one of the biggest ecosystems of users, tools and applications (block explorers, DEXs, CEXs, wallet applications etc), will provide the network with significant advantages (via user access, assurance and experience) in its early phase of growth.

**Payment Optimisation:** For large uploads, Merkle Tree batch payments reduce on-chain cost from O(n) per chunk to O(1) per batch — a single Merkle root submission on Arbitrum covers an entire batch of chunks. This makes large-scale archiving economically practical.


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