Ethereum wallet simulator: an ETH screen that reads right

An ETH screen is judged on details a Bitcoin or Solana screen does not have: 18 decimals behind the display, fees quoted in gwei, a 0x address whose capital letters are a checksum, and dollar stablecoins with 6 decimals beside it.

Published: 16 October 2026

Ether, gwei and wei: the units behind the screen

Ether divides into 18 decimals. The smallest unit, the wei, is 10^-18 ETH; the gwei, a billion wei, is 10^-9 ETH, or 0.000000001 ETH. The Ethereum documentation keeps wei for technical implementations and gwei for human-readable gas fees. Neither appears on a wallet's home screen, which shows ETH cut to a handful of decimals.

How many is a display choice. Our list shows five decimals below 1,000 units and two above. At an ETH price near $2,530, the fifth decimal, 0.00001 ETH, is worth about 2.5 cents, so the visible quantity and the dollar value agree to within a few cents. Eight decimals on a list row would be precision nobody reads; two would hide up to $12.66 in rounding.

Start from the unit price

We read ETH at $2,532.78 on October 12, 2026, around 12:35 UTC: an order of magnitude for the examples below, not a quote. At that price, real holdings are rarely whole coins. $1,000 of ETH is 0.39482 ETH. A larger position might read 3.84128 ETH. A quantity of 10 or 2.5 reads as typed, because a balance is what is left of purchases made in dollars, at prices with decimals, minus fees.

Type no more decimals than the list displays. The value is computed from what you typed, so a sixth decimal the viewer cannot see makes the row disagree with a calculator. The same check on a whole balance, with five tokens, is worked through in the crypto balance simulator.

The dollar value is a product, and it moves

The fiat figure on the ETH row is quantity × live price: 3.84128 × $2,532.78 = $9,729.12. In our wallet simulator, ETH is one of five built-in tokens whose market price and 24-hour change refresh every 4 seconds; the quantity is the only number you type. Each dollar ETH moves changes this row by $3.84, so on a recording the cents roll every few seconds, the way they do in an app.

The 24h line on an ETH row

ETH was up 1.0892% on the day when we read it, which the row shows as +1.09%. The percentage applies to yesterday's value, so yesterday this row was worth 9,729.12 / 1.010892 = $9,624.29 and the change is +$104.83. Taking 1.0892% of today's value gives $105.97, $1.14 too high.

Add 2,416.52 USDC at $1.0008, worth $2,418.45 and down 0.01% (-$0.24). The header reads $12,147.57, its change is the sum of the two rows, +$104.59, and its percentage is 104.59 / 12,042.98 = +0.87%. A header repeating the ETH row's +1.09% would be wrong. The derivation is the same as on the Bitcoin wallet simulator page; only the decimals change.

The tokens that usually sit next to ETH

A wallet that holds ETH usually holds ERC-20 tokens as well: the token standard proposed as EIP-20 in November 2015. Each token sets its own number of decimals, which wallets read for display, and the common ones differ from ETH:

We read the decimals from each token's contract on Ethereum mainnet on October 12, 2026. WETH is the trap on a mockup. It is worth exactly one ETH by construction, but a custom row keeps the price you typed and never moves, so on video it drifts away from the live ETH row above it within seconds. Leave it out, or keep it small and below the live rows. SOL, BTC and HYPE are built in too: on an ETH-first screen, remove them from the token list or keep them as small rows. The same choices on a SOL-first screen are in the Solana wallet simulator.

The 0x address and its checksum

An Ethereum address is 0x followed by 40 hexadecimal characters, 42 in all. The same string is valid on every EVM chain, so the address alone never tells you which network. Its capital letters are a checksum, defined in EIP-55 in 2016: hash the lowercase address with Keccak-256, then capitalize each letter whose matching digit in the hash is 8 or higher.

Worked on the first mixed-case test case in EIP-55, 0x5aAeb6053F3E94C9b9A09f33669435E7Ef1BeAed. The Keccak-256 hash of its lowercase form starts with d385. The second character, an a, sits against a 3, so it stays lowercase; the third, also an a, sits against an 8, so it becomes A. Nine of the address's eighteen letters end up as capitals. Change its ninth character from 3 to 4, and the capitals no longer match the new hash, so a wallet that checks rejects it. EIP-55 puts the chance that a mistyped address passes by accident at 0.0247%. Written all in lowercase, the same address is still accepted, and carries no check at all. We ran all four mixed-case test cases through our own Keccak-256 code before quoting them.

Our simulator draws no 0x address. Its receive sheet carries a short decorative label and a pattern that is not a QR code, so nothing on the screen can receive anything, by design.

Gas: the fee line a real ETH screen shows

Before every send, a real Ethereum wallet shows a network fee. The documentation gives the formula: gas used × (base fee + priority fee). The base fee is set by the protocol and burned; the priority fee, or tip, goes to the validator. A plain ETH transfer uses 21,000 gas.

What that costs depends on the day. On October 12, 2026, we read 1,024 consecutive blocks from a public Ethereum node: the base fee ran from 0.055 to 0.185 gwei, with a median of 0.090, and the median tip was 0.05 gwei. At 0.14 gwei, a transfer cost 21,000 × 0.14 = 2,940 gwei, or 0.00000294 ETH: under one cent at $2,532.78. Token transfers use more gas. Twenty-five USDC transfers we measured in four blocks that day used 40,360 to 62,272 gas, median 57,472: about two cents.

The Ethereum documentation's own example uses a 10 gwei base fee and a 2 gwei tip, 252,000 gwei for the same transfer, about 86 times what we measured. Both are right for their moment. A send screen that quotes a fee has to quote one that fits the date on it. Our simulator sends nothing, so it shows no fee.

What a real Ethereum wallet has that a mockup does not

• An address that resolves. Anyone can open it on a block explorer and see its balance and its history.
• Transaction hashes. Every send has one, and an explorer looks it up, with the gas it used and the block it landed in.
• A network. Because the same 0x address exists on every EVM chain, a real wallet says which network it is showing.
• Token balances read from contracts. Each ERC-20 row comes from the token's own contract, with its own decimals.

The simulator has none of these that an explorer can check. It connects to no chain, never asks for a private key or a seed phrase, and cannot sign or send anything.

What an ETH screenshot never proves

Searches like "fake eth wallet address" come from two places. Some people need an address for a mockup: a mockup does not need one that looks real, and an example copied from a page may be someone's live address. Others have been handed a screenshot with an address on it. Then the rule is simple: anyone can type a quantity next to any address, and a picture offers nothing an explorer can check.

What settles a claim about holdings is the address itself on an explorer, then a message you choose, signed from that address. The tells of a composed wallet screenshot help you doubt an image; they never replace that check. Our terms forbid presenting a simulator screen as proof of funds, and every screen My Larp Wallet draws is a mockup. Used for what it is, a lesson, a deck or an explainer video, an ETH screen only has to read right. See the live wallet on the homepage.

Sources

• Ethereum Improvement Proposals, ERC-55: Mixed-case checksum address encoding, 2016
• ethereum.org, Gas and fees, 2026
• ethereum.org, Intro to Ether, 2025
• ethereum.org, ERC-20 Token Standard, 2026
• ethereum.org, What is wrapped ether (WETH), 2026
• Circle, USDC contract addresses, 2026
• Our readings from a public Ethereum node (ethereum-rpc.publicnode.com): fee history for blocks 26,175,411 to 26,176,434, gas used by transfers in blocks 26,176,435 to 26,176,438, and decimals of the USDC, USDT and WETH contracts, October 12, 2026
• Binance public market data, ETHUSDT 24-hour ticker, read October 12, 2026

Questions

How many decimals does ETH have?

Eighteen. The smallest unit, the wei, is 0.000000000000000001 ETH, and the gwei, a billion wei, is 0.000000001 ETH. No wallet shows all eighteen on its home screen: a list row usually stops at four to six decimals, and ours shows five below 1,000 ETH.

What is gwei?

A denomination of ether: 1 gwei is 0.000000001 ETH, or a billion wei. Gas prices are quoted in it because they are tiny in ETH. At an ETH price of $2,532.78, one gwei was worth about $0.0000025.

Why does an Ethereum address have capital letters?

The mix of capitals is a checksum defined in EIP-55. The lowercase address is hashed with Keccak-256, and each letter is capitalized when the matching digit of the hash is 8 or higher. A wallet that checks it rejects most typos; an address written all in lowercase is still valid but carries no check.

How much gas does it cost to send ETH?

A plain ETH transfer uses 21,000 units of gas, and the fee is gas used times the base fee plus the priority fee, in gwei. On October 12, 2026, base fees we read on Ethereum ran from 0.055 to 0.185 gwei, so a transfer cost under one cent. Fees move with demand, so the figure belongs to the day.

Can an Ethereum wallet screenshot prove a balance?

No. Anyone can type a quantity next to any address, and a picture carries nothing a block explorer can check. A balance is shown by the address itself on an explorer, tied to its holder by a message signed from that address. Our terms forbid presenting a simulator screen as proof of funds.