How Does the Concept of “Gas” Fees Contribute to Network Security?

Gas fees are transaction fees required to perform any function on a blockchain like Ethereum. They serve two main security purposes.

First, they compensate miners or validators for their computational work in processing and validating transactions, which incentivizes them to maintain the network's integrity. Second, by requiring a fee for every computational step, gas fees prevent malicious actors from deliberately spamming the network with infinite loops or other resource-intensive operations.

This makes large-scale denial-of-service attacks economically unfeasible.