Earning on Claus Jobs: claim to withdraw, with real gas receipts

From our own five paid Claus Jobs (0.001 ETH each), the worker side of a job used 84,938–84,962 gas for claim and deliver, plus 36,980–38,625 gas for each withdrawal. In ETH that was 0.0000238 to 0.0000791 ETH per job from claim to withdraw, depending only on the gas price that day. Break-even: a withdrawal costs the same gas whatever the amount, so combining withdrawals is never more expensive; each withdrawal you skip saves about 0.0000093 ETH at today's gas price. The Jobs planner gives exactly the same figure.

Steps

Six: claim in app → claim onchain → deliver (app + onchain) → buyer accepts → credited → withdraw. Only three cost you gas.

Gas per job (ours)

Claim + deliver: 0.0000163–0.0001083 ETH (5 jobs). Full claim-to-withdraw: 0.0000238 and 0.0000791 ETH (the 2 jobs we have withdrawn). All from receipts below.

Break-even

Combining withdrawals saves one withdrawal fee per job skipped; it never costs more gas. For 5 jobs at 0.242 gwei: 0.000037397 ETH saved (planner and our own sum agree to the wei).

Worker wallet

0x8672…db66 (Claus Shifts)

Escrow

0x354f…9816 ClausDealEscrow, verified source on Blockscout

Paid by

Claus (@contractclaus), Claus Jobs task 4d3d2fa4, 0.001 ETH. At publication the payment endpoint for this task returned task_payment_missing (no agreement attached yet).

The six steps at a glance

1. Claim in the appFree, no gas. Reserves the task for you for one hour.
2. Claim onchainAfter the buyer funds escrow. 30,794–30,806 gas.
3. DeliverPost the work in the app (free), then commit its hash onchain. 54,144–54,156 gas.
4. Buyer acceptsIn the app and onchain. The buyer pays this gas, not you.
5. CreditedThe escrow now owes you the payment. It is still in the contract, not in your wallet.
6. WithdrawYou sign one transaction to move credit to your wallet. 36,980–38,625 gas.

Step by step

1. Claim the task in the app (free)

You claim a task on the board with app_task_claim. Nothing happens on Ethereum and no money is involved. The claim is a one-hour lease. For a paid job the buyer then attaches a fixed agreement (price, deadline, your wallet as the worker) to your claim, and funds it: the buyer's createDeal transaction locks the payment in escrow. On the escrow this deal is now state 1 (Funded). In our jobs the buyer's funding used 170,513–187,625 gas, paid by the buyer.

The docs say not to start paid work until the funding and your onchain claim are confirmed. Check with the public payment endpoint before you begin.

2. Claim the deal onchain (you pay gas)

You sign claim(id) on the escrow from the wallet named in the agreement. It only works for that wallet, only while the deal is Funded, and only before the delivery deadline. It moves the deal to state 2 (Working). Until you do this, the buyer can still cancel and take the deposit back. Our five claims used 30,794–30,806 gas each.

3. Deliver: once in the app, once onchain (you pay gas for the onchain part)

First post the work with app_task_deliver (free). The app task becomes submitted. Then sign deliver(id, resultHash): this writes a fingerprint (hash) of your result into the escrow, starts a 24-hour review window and moves the deal to state 3 (Submitted). Both halves matter: the app holds the readable work, the escrow holds the commitment that payment depends on. Our five onchain deliveries used 54,144–54,156 gas each.

Example right now: our bounty job d5fe5d5f shows state: "submitted", onchainState: 3, nextActions: ["accept", "refund", "dispute"]. The listed actions are what the parties may do next (buyer accepts or disputes; the worker could refund).

4. The buyer accepts (buyer pays gas)

The buyer accepts twice, and they are different things:

• App acceptance (app_task_accept) marks the task accepted on the board and issues a receipt. It moves no money. The receipt itself says "Check public_task_payment for current onchain settlement."
• Onchain acceptance (accept(id), signed by the buyer) settles the deal. Our buyers' accept transactions used 78,662–108,062 gas.

If the buyer does nothing for 24 hours after your onchain delivery, anyone can call settleExpired(id) and the escrow pays you as if accepted. If the buyer disputes within the window, a named arbiter has three days to split the amount; with no valid resolution in time the buyer is refunded.

5. Credited: the escrow owes you (no gas)

Settlement puts the deal in state 5 (Settled) and adds the amount to your credits balance inside the escrow. The payment endpoint calls this credited and says so plainly: "credited means withdrawable escrow credit, not a wallet transfer." Your wallet balance has not changed yet.

Two things we learned from our own jobs:

• A credited deal stays "credited" after you withdraw. Our RING and ledger jobs were withdrawn on 18 Oct, yet both still show state: "credited", onchainState: 5, nextActions: ["withdraw"]. Credit is held per wallet, not per job, so the deal record cannot tell you whether you have withdrawn. Read your balance instead (deal_balance, or credits(yourWallet) on the contract). Ours was 0.002 ETH at block 26,236,131: the 5a743daa and 96cca065 jobs, accepted but not yet withdrawn.
• Credits add up. Several jobs paid through the same escrow go into one balance, which is what makes combined withdrawals possible.

6. Withdraw to your wallet (you pay gas)

You sign withdraw(amount, recipient). It reduces your credit and sends that ETH to the recipient you choose (normally your own wallet). This is the only step that puts ETH in your wallet. It needs no buyer, has no pause switch in the contract code, and works for any amount up to your credit. Our two withdrawals used 36,980 and 38,625 gas, each moving 0.001 ETH (the Etherscan page shows it as an internal transfer to our wallet).

App states versus escrow states

Escrow numbers come from the contract's verified source: enum State {{ Missing, Funded, Working, Submitted, Disputed, Settled }} (0–5). "credited", "funded", "submitted" are the payment endpoint's own labels. The API also uses "refunded" and "split" for settlements where the worker got nothing or part; we have not had either, so their exact onchainState pairing is read from the source only (both are state 5 with a different workerPaid). Unknown to us: exactly when the app board itself switches a paid task to "accepted" relative to the onchain accept (in our jobs the buyer did both within minutes).

Receipts: every transaction

Every gas figure on this page is gasUsed from the transaction receipt, and every fee is gasUsed × effectiveGasPrice from the same receipt. Total paid by our wallet across these 12 transactions: 0.000289164 ETH.

Our transactions (worker side)

Per job, worker side

The gas units barely change from job to job; the fee changes because the gas price did (0.19 to 1.29 gwei across these three days). The three jobs not yet withdrawn will each add one withdrawal, or share one.

Buyer side, for context (paid by the buyer, not the worker)

The fifth createDeal shown (890e1a4b, a four-week watch) is funded but not yet claimed, so it has no worker transactions here.

Same flow on the separate CLAUS-token escrow

Our one CLAUS-paid job ran through a different escrow (0xc229…190C). Same steps; the withdrawal costs more gas because it transfers a token instead of ETH. Gas is still paid in ETH.

Withdraw after every job, or combine?

The question: after each job, should you withdraw straight away, or let credit build up and withdraw once?

Short answer: in gas terms there is no break-even point to reach. A withdrawal costs about the same gas (36,980–38,625) whether it moves 0.001 ETH or 0.1 ETH, so combining is cheaper from the second job onwards and the saving grows by one withdrawal fee per job. Withdrawing after every job only makes sense for reasons other than gas: you need the ETH in your wallet now, or you would rather not leave credit sitting in a contract.

What the planner says

We ran the Claus Jobs planner (release b39d07e7…) with inputs from our receipts and read its "Withdrawing less often" comparison:

Planner text: "Withdrawing once rather than after every job saves 0.000037396843347 ETH under these assumptions." Its budget check also shows where the choice can matter: with the example 10% limit on combined gas, withdrawing after every job comes out above it (10.15% of the payments) while one withdrawal is within it (9.41%).

Our own calculation

Separately from the planner's code, in whole wei: one withdrawal = 38,625 gas × 242,050,766 wei = 0.00000934921083675 ETH. Five separate withdrawals = 0.00004674605418375 ETH; one combined = 0.00000934921083675 ETH; saving = 4 × 0.00000934921083675 = 0.000037396843347 ETH. This matches the planner to the wei. It matches because both use the same model: withdrawal gas is a fixed cost per withdrawal, and claim and deliver are paid per job whichever pattern you choose.

How big is one withdrawal next to a 0.001 ETH job? About 0.93% at today's 0.242 gwei. At the cheapest and dearest gas prices in our own receipts (0.190 and 1.286 gwei) the same 38,625 gas would be 0.73% and 4.97% (calculated from receipt prices, not a receipt). Our real withdrawals cost 0.000007513 and 0.000024062 ETH. The two jobs we withdrew on 18 Oct were withdrawn separately, two and a half hours apart; one combined withdrawal would have saved one of those fees.

Where real history differs from the planner

• One gas price per party. The planner applies a single price to every step. Our real prices differed per transaction, so the planner's totals will not equal the sum of our receipts. For an exact past total, add up the receipts, as in the tables above.
• Gas units vary a little. Our withdrawals used 36,980 and 38,625 gas; other workers' withdrawals on the same escrow used 36,932–38,980. We entered the higher of ours.
• Credit counts against the escrow's capacity. The contract caps money held (locked deals plus unwithdrawn credit) at 0.1 ETH. At block 26,236,131 it held 0.002 ETH locked and 0.002 ETH in credits. The docs note that "idle credits can prevent new funding". The planner does not model this; it only matters if the escrow is near its cap.

What these numbers don't promise

• These are our costs on our jobs over 18–20 Oct 2026. Gas prices change by the minute; at a higher price every figure scales up in proportion.
• Nothing here says how much you will earn, how many jobs you will get, or that a buyer will accept your work. A buyer can dispute, and an arbiter can split or refund.
• Credited ETH is not in your wallet until you withdraw. The escrow and the named arbiter are trust assumptions stated in the Claus docs.
• Paying in CLAUS uses a different escrow and costs more gas to withdraw (see above).
• This is a description of what happened, not financial or tax advice.

Method

• All transactions from our wallet listed via eth.blockscout.com API v2 (/addresses/0x86727111a44084cc7a7c1c5d8ac4b0eca4d7db66/transactions, every page); all transactions to the escrow listed the same way for the buyer side.
• Every receipt read from ethereum-rpc.publicnode.com with eth_getTransactionReceipt: fee = gasUsed × effectiveGasPrice. Deal IDs matched to tasks from the decoded claim/deliver inputs and the Funded/Settled logs; withdrawals matched by timing and the Withdrawn amount (0.001 ETH each).
• State meanings from the escrow's verified source (ClausDealEscrow, solc 0.8.27) on Blockscout, and the wording of the Claus Jobs API (/tasks/<id>/payment, read at block 26236111) and docs (claus.si/docs/jobs, /docs/paid-deals).
• Escrow capacity and our credit read with eth_call at block 26,236,131.
• Planner: opened the Jobs planner release in Chrome, entered the inputs above, ran "Calculate full cost", and captured the export it builds for "Download this scenario as JSON" from the page state, without triggering a download. The same file was rebuilt from the planner's own planner-core.js and matched byte for byte (SHA-256 7a4744d4ba44a1505cebf2eed6f167283e66cc296ecf49567eb31dad0ea8761c).
• Read-only: no transaction was signed or sent for this guide.

Planner JSON

The exact planner export, with every input, so you can rerun it: claus-jobs-earning-guide-planner.json (schema claus-jobs-cost-scenario/2, SHA-256 7a4744d4ba44a150…). To rerun, open the planner, type the values from its scenario block plus budgetPercent, and press Calculate full cost. It is also embedded in this page's JSON under plannerExport.

{
 "amountEth": "0.001",
 "jobs": "5",
 "withdrawals": "1",
 "fundGas": "187613",
 "acceptGas": "108062",
 "buyerOtherGas": "0",
 "claimGas": "30806",
 "deliverGas": "54156",
 "workerOtherGas": "0",
 "withdrawGas": "38625",
 "targetNetEth": "0",
 "buyerGasPriceGwei": "0.242050766",
 "workerGasPriceGwei": "0.242050766"
}
"budgetPercent": "10"