With the rise of cryptocurrencies, blockchain technology revolutionized digital payments, decentralized applications, and assets management in the digital space. However, there is the issue that continues to haunt users – transaction gas fees. These are network costs in native tokens incurred to process operations on blockchain. These commissions can create obstacles, especially for beginners or users engaged with low daily activity.
Here come gasless transactions or sponsored transactions; their purpose is to make sure users never have to pay gas fees directly. Instead, a third party typically pays the bill, and users get a tamper-proof and decentralized network that works without any friction and at a better cost.
In this article, we will consider gasless safety issues: what they are, how they work, blockchain risks, gasless incidents, as well as the ways and strategies to reduce them.
So, what are gasless or zero-fee transactions? With this feature, users can interact with a blockchain network without spending gas, which is normally required to process a transaction.
In traditional systems, those fees ensure that miners or validators get paid for their jobs. Gasless models, on the other hand, employ mechanisms such as meta transactions or fee abstraction to offload this cost from a user. The cost is either borne by the dApp provider, a relayer, or a sponsor platform, resulting in a more seamless and inclusive user experience.
This model reduces the financial barriers to entry and fosters wider participation in blockchain ecosystems.
Here’s a simplified rundown of the process:
This allows users to engage with decentralized protocols, like Qi Dao, without the need to hold or outright manage native tokens.
Gasless transactions are commonly handled by dApps and relayer networks, often backed by governance security protocols intent on achieving a level of decentralization, resilience, and security that sometimes even surpasses traditional Ethereum configurations.
Security Advantages
Yet the security of these systems is predicated on the soundness of their underlying smart contracts and infrastructure.
Gasless transactions have revolutionized the interactions with blockchains as they take the burden of gas fees away from a user. Let’s compare gasless vs traditional transactions:
Traditional Transactions
Gasless Transactions
Gasless transactions are an important evolution in how usable blockchains can be, but they come with complications. As adoption increases, the demand for better security practices, smart contract audits, and strong relayer systems to ensure user blockchain defense and trust in this new model will also rise.
A gasless transaction is not, in fact, 100% free; they are typically powered by third party services or intricate smart contracts that pay for your transaction fees. These components need to be tested/audited stringently to avert loopholes that might be targeted by attackers. A security breach can threaten the entire platform and put you at risk of serious financial losses and damage to your reputation.
There are several reasons smart contracts can be vulnerable. The examples are incorrect business logic, insecure code, or issues with external dependencies or interactions that can lead to unforeseen behaviors. Each of these is a possible basis for blockchain attacks. Smart contracts can carry serious risks if they are not engineered and tested properly.
Now, let’s consider relayer vulnerabilities. Gasless transactions depend on the network and performance of relayers. Transactions could fail or be delayed for long periods if no relayers are available. Gasless systems provide a better experience for the users but at the cost of introducing new blockchain risks since someone other than the user (the relayers) must pay transaction fees.
In this way, conferencing platforms like Tokenum prevent these threats, requiring no or stored private user data to help guarantee user privacy and overall system security.
As smart contracts are immutable and the difficulty of blockchain environments, smart contracts can be subject to various attack vectors. Developers must take these vectors into account when developing software to protect against gasless vulnerabilities. Following best practices, employing trusted libraries, and performing comprehensive audits are fundamental approaches to hardening smart contracts and safeguarding them from hostile entities.
Cryptocurrency transactions come with inherent risks, including extreme price volatility, potential fraud and the absence of regulatory oversight. Financial institutions engaging in crypto transactions are required to take affirmative steps to manage their risk.
This involves thorough customer due diligence, capable checks on customer legitimacy and financial status through multiple data sources, group transaction procedures, and compliance with local regulations and laws.
Smart contracts audits are the bedrock of DeFi security. Smart contracts are audited — a close inspection of the codebase to find bugs, inefficiencies, and gasless vulnerabilities before the contracts become live. With blockchain’s immutable nature, it’s paramount that smart contracts are secure, tamper-proof; once they’re deployed, there’s no undoing any mistakes.
With more than $98 mln lost due to vulnerabilities, and fraud in January 2025, the need for rigorous auditing to protect user funds becomes more and more urgent.
They safeguard user wallets from hacks through strong security practices, including secure coding standards and modern encryption. Multi-signature wallets and Multi-Party Computation (MPC) derive wallet security by giving transaction authority to multiple trusted parties, thus, no one person can act alone.
By being decentralized, these systems are more secure, reducing the risks of data breaches and giving users full control over their funds. Decentralized exchanges are especially relevant for unbanked individuals and users looking for anonymous trading since KYC checks are generally not needed to use these services.
Furthermore, decentralized exchanges typically offer lower fees and enhanced censorship resistance, allowing for greater user empowerment and control over trading activities.
Blockchain technology has revolutionized how we store and transfer value, but rapid adoption has also revealed vulnerabilities that attackers can take advantage of. In this section, we will examine some of the most significant blockchain security breaches in recent memory and the lessons they impart. These case studies show rich gasless insights into creating and preserving secure blockchain ecosystems.
Let’s start with noting that using OpenSea means allowing the platform to transfer your NFTs. This became a vulnerability via a scam from the “gasless signature” feature on OpenSea.
In OpenSea's case, when users start gasless sales, they are asked to approve a signature request containing an unreadable message. Phishing websites exploit this by requesting users sign these nonsensical messages for fraudulent purposes.
According to Harpie, an on-chain security firewall, these so-called signature requests are usually masqueraded as a required step to log in or access services on websites such as OpenSea and other marketplaces. This was posted by Harpie on Twitter on the 22nd of December, 2022.
Here’s what three signature requests a website might show look like, in an image shared by Twitter user @Wii_Mee.
Streamlined User Experience: BuildMatcha uses the Gasless API to power Matcha Auto — a proprietary gasless transaction mode designed to improve the DEX experience.
Improved Trade Efficiency: Gasless API slashed the number of failed trades by 85%, compared to top DEXs — allowing transactions to confirm on-chain an average of one block faster and protecting thousands of trades from MEV attacks.
Increased User Engagement: We saw a 7% Quarter-over-Quarter increase in trade volume and a 20% increase in daily active traders for Matcha since the launch of Matcha Auto.
High User Adoption: 70% of Matcha users use Matcha Auto to trade today, demonstrating that Matcha Auto is highly useful and appealing.
Fast Time to Market: Matcha Auto was brought to market in less than 2 months due to the ease of integration with Gasless API.
Gasless Transaction is a Game Changer in DEX Evolution. This innovation reduces reliance on fixing CEXs, helps DeFi become more user-friendly, and positions DEXs to begin becoming a serious threat to CEXs by removing friction from the trading experience.
With the anticipated removal of technological hurdles, gasless transactions are set to become common practice across DeFi platforms. Antier has catered to over 8 years of blockchain experience, assisting entrepreneurs with building DEX aggregators or exchanges with Layer 2 integration.
With gasless transactions, blockchains become more usable than ever before since one of the largest obstacles, gas costs, stands in the way of mass adoption for blockchain. Not only do these blockchain innovations facilitate accessibility for new users, they can also serve as a gateway for the greater adoption of crypto-based services.
