The blockchain technology has come a long way from an interesting, promising technology to a huge industry with a capitalization of trillions of dollars. Yet one consistent pain point for users remains: the fee in a native token they have to pay to process any operation. These fees can indeed be a significant barrier to entry, especially for newcomers or those who want to make many small transactions per day.
This is where gasless transactions come in, a powerful feature that eliminates the need for users to pay gas fees directly, ultimately leading to a frictionless usage experience. In this article, we’ll take a closer look at what gasless transactions are, how they function, and ways on how they are advantageous for both users and businesses.
Gasless transactions are an intuitive way to experience a product without directly paying the cost of a transaction. In most cases this is implemented with a construct called meta transactions. According to such a scheme, a relayer submits transactions on a users’ behalf, and pays their gas costs.
When a dApp user interacts, his/her transaction request is signed and transferred to a relayer. The signed transaction is then sent by relayer to a blockchain. A relayer covers all the costs, which means that a user can start using the application without owning or spending the blockchain's native token.
The gasless flow focuses on a meta transaction, a mechanism to introduce usability by shifting transaction costs to a third party. Let’s consider it on a specific example, bt.io gasless relayer.
As depicted in the above figure, once a user initiates a asset transfer from BTTC to Ethereum by the entry point bt.io, have the option of Fast mode or Classic mode.
In Classic mode (without Relayer service), bt.io interacts with the cross-chain Bridge Contract to start the transfer. When the assets arrive on the Bridge Contract on Ethereum chain, users need to manually call the Bridge Contract and withdraw the assets to the Receiver Address.
Fast mode (Relayer service) allows users to select any Relayer provider that quotes some service fee. The assets are then sent to the Relayer contract, where they are divided. A portion is used to pay the Relayer provider as a service fee, while the other part is sent to the Bridge Contract for the cross-chain operation to continue.
Gasless does not mean free — someone still has to pay. Sponsors & DAOs may subsidize community activity, relayers monetize later with fees, subscriptions or data.
So where can you actually save?
Today, regular users can use zero-fee transactions with the growing infrastructure and tooling around meta transactions, relayers, and smart account wallets (like ERC-4337 / Account Abstraction). Here is a practical tutorial on how to make use of gasless transactions for both developers/project owners, and end users.
First up, use a dApp that accepts zero-fee transactions. These gasless dApps have implemented meta-transaction or account abstraction systems, that is, you can transact without the need of native tokens (ETH/MATIC).
Well-known dApps with gasless UX include NFT marketplaces, DAO tools and any dApp with a custom integration (e.g. Biconomy, Gelato, or ERC-4337).
Connect your wallet as with any other Web3 application. Common supported wallets are: MetaMask, Coinbase Wallet, WalletConnect compatible wallets, and smart contract wallets, such as Safe, ZeroDev, UniPass, and Rabby.
If the dApp supports gasless transactions you don't need any ETH or gas tokens in your wallet to get started.
You are not directly sending a blockchain transaction. Instead, you’re signing a message which includes the action you want to carry out. This is called a meta-transaction. Here is the JSON structured data for this purpose (according to the standard EIP-712):
{
"types": {
"EIP712Domain": [
{"name": "name", "type": "string"},
{"name": "version", "type": "string"},
{"name": "chainId", "type": "uint256"},
{"name": "verifyingContract", "type": "address"}
],
"ForwardRequest": [
{"name": "from", "type": "address"},
{"name": "to", "type": "address"},
{"name": "value", "type": "uint256"},
{"name": "gas", "type": "uint256"},
{"name": "nonce", "type": "uint256"},
{"name": "data", "type": "bytes"}
]
},
"primaryType": "ForwardRequest",
"domain": {
"name": "MinimalForwarder",
"version": "0.0.1",
"chainId": <network_chain_id>,
"verifyingContract": "<forwarder_contract_address>"
},
"message": {
"from": "<user_address>",
"to": "<recipient_contract_address>",
"value": 0,
"gas": 210000,
"nonce": "",
"data": ""
}
}
The dApp binds the transaction data into a message. No gas is consumed; you’re simply demonstrating that you’re willing to act.
After you sign the message:
You don't pay any gas, unless dApp has some restrictions or premium features.
Once submitted you get a transaction hash similar to a normal transaction on the blockchain, and can monitor it on a block explorer. Something like this:
93ecf1707212d0cf547e3f4a0d4ff27fd8d7bdfb4f9d101f628063c554de7571
From the user's perspective your transaction “just works” — no gas, no failed transaction due to underpricing, no hassle with ETH.
Early blockchain networks used transaction fees (gas) to establish network security mechanisms and incentivize actors to participate. But as Web3 use has soared in recent years, it’s increasingly obvious that gasless technology is the future of the industry.
Traditional Web2-style apps tend to rely on a form of selling personal data instead of extracting money outright from users. Current Web3 models, such as metaverse gaming, NFT collectibles, and creator-first content platforms could all be seriously challenged if users were forced to pay for every transaction. Meanwhile, a gasless model provides a smooth and friction-free experience to developers and users.
Game and NFT platforms are one of the biggest adopters of costless transactions as user experience is a must — and most particularly when onboarding non-crypto-native users who don’t want to have to buy ETH with KYC and USDT fees or paying gas from an exchange to then play.
Advantages of crypto fee-free transactions:
Decentraland, Zed Run and Sorare are several examples of the platforms that have been using gasless transactions.
Gasless transactions have substantial advantages for the DeFi world, especially DEXs. By taking out any gas fees, trading becomes cheaper and more cost-effective. This is particularly true for customers who are moving low gas transactions. This can help increase on-chain engagement and DeFi platform usage overall.
Onboard gasless systems also can make it easier for newcomers to get started without the need to have a wallet and some crypto that can be used to pay for gas—another common barrier. However, in order for these systems to function, Decentralized Exchange Software Development is essential. Developers must construct resilient and hardened infrastructure that can handle free crypto transactions securely. This allows for seamless trades without the worry of volatile gas prices or surprise fees.
Fundamentally, gasless transactions make the world of DeFi trading more user intuitive and cost-effective, but they are backed with technological innovations happening on the back end to make the user experience seamless.
Gasless APIs have major UX benefits, but they also have technical, economic, and trust limitations. These restrictions apply to the systems developers as well as to the users who are depending on the systems. Below is a clear breakdown:
Both rate limiting and spam protection are essential to any gasless transaction system. Because users do not pay gas, there is a risk of abuse — such as spamming the network with nonsensical free transactions or depleting the sponsor’s gas quota. To fix this, it is common for dApps and infrastructure providers to impose certain rate limits and anti-spam practices.
Without user-paid gas fees:
Rate limiting has the following drawbacks:
Centralization of relayers is a large issue for the gasless swap transactions space (especially with meta-transactions or ERC-4337 account abstraction). Relayers facilitate good UX by forwarding transactions and relaying gas, but with such a high degree of centralization come security (censorship, reliability, trust) issues.
The problem can be formulated as follows: in gasless transactions users signs the message not the transactions, a relayer system get that message, pays the gas and submits to the blockchain. This means that the relayer becomes a gatekeeper decidin if they want to or not to relay your transaction. Thus, such scheme leads to:
Here’s a quick side-by-side comparison of gasless transactions vs traditional (user-paid) transactions, that outlines differences in terms of UX, costs, security, and developer effort:
