The Future of DAOs Is Gasless, Not Permissionless

Voter apathy isn't just about interest; it's about cost. A $5 gas fee to vote on a $10 proposal is economic nonsense. This creates plutocratic governance where only large holders can afford to participate, undermining decentralization.

• Key Benefit 1: Enables micro-governance and high-frequency signaling.
• Key Benefit 2: Unlocks participation from users in high-gas environments like Ethereum L1.

Shift the gas burden from the user to the application or a third-party relayer. Users sign an 'intent' (e.g., 'I want to vote Yea on Proposal 123'), and a network of solvers competes to fulfill it most efficiently, often sponsoring the gas.

• Key Benefit 1: Zero-cost user experience for core DAO interactions.
• Key Benefit 2: Relayers monetize via MEV capture or protocol fees, aligning incentives.

Smart contract wallets enable sponsored transactions, batched actions, and social recovery. A DAO can pre-pay gas for its members or integrate with paymasters like Stackup or Biconomy to subsidize operations.

• Key Benefit 1: Session keys allow for gasless interaction for a set period.
• Key Benefit 2: Removes seed phrase friction, onboarding non-crypto-native contributors.

Gasless systems trade user-paid fees for potential centralization risk in the relayer/solver layer. A dominant solver for a major DAO (e.g., Aave or Compound) becomes a critical censorable point.

• Key Benefit 1: Forces design of decentralized relay networks and anti-MEV mechanisms.
• Key Benefit 2: Makes transaction ordering a explicit, auctionable resource.

DAOs must budget for gas sponsorship as a core operational cost, treating it like AWS credits for web2 apps. This transforms treasury management from passive holding to active user acquisition spend.

• Key Benefit 1: Gas budgets become a measurable KPI for governance health.
• Key Benefit 2: Creates a new SaaS-like market for relayer services targeting DAOs.

The winning stack will make gas completely invisible to the end-user. The DAO experience will mirror web2 apps: click, sign, done. This requires tight integration between smart wallets, intent protocols, and L2s like Optimism & Arbitrum.

• Key Benefit 1: Mass adoption of on-chain governance becomes technically feasible.
• Key Benefit 2: DAOs evolve into true digital nations with seamless citizen interaction.

ERC-4337 and Paymasters are a start, but they still require users to hold a specific chain's gas token and manage session keys. This is a half-measure.

• User still faces chain-specific friction for initial funding and top-ups.
• Session keys create security/revocation headaches for DAO treasuries.
• True abstraction means the user never thinks about gas, not just paying with USDC.

Protocols like UniswapX, CowSwap, and Across pioneered this for swaps. The user signs a declarative intent ("I want this outcome"), and a network of solvers competes to fulfill it optimally, abstracting all gas and routing.

• User signs a message, not a transaction – completely gasless.
• Solvers batch and route across L2s, earning via MEV capture or fees.
• This is the model for DAO operations: voting, treasury management, and payroll as signed intents.

Safe is the dominant smart account standard, but its gasless future depends on the infrastructure stack around it. Gelato Network and Biconomy provide relayer services and Paymaster APIs that DAOs can plug into.

• Safe{Core} Kit provides SDKs for sponsored transactions and batch flows.
• Stack providers handle gas estimation & refunds across any EVM chain.
• Critical for DAOs: Enables 1-click multi-chain governance proposals and executions.

This isn't just a feature—it's a new layer. Projects like Polygon AggLayer and Cosmos with Interchain Accounts aim to create environments where applications are natively multi-chain and gas is a backend concern.

• DAOs operate a single treasury view across all connected chains.
• Actions are authenticated via the home chain, executed anywhere.
• Gas becomes a B2B settlement layer, invisible to the end-user and DAO member.

Relayers become the new permissioned validators. The entity controlling the gas sponsorship wallet can censor or front-run proposals. This centralizes power at the infrastructure layer, a single point of failure for governance.

• Risk: A relayer like Biconomy or Gelato could be compelled to filter transactions.
• Impact: Proposal censorship becomes trivial, breaking the liveness guarantee of permissionless systems.

Architectures like UniswapX and CowSwap rely on solvers. For DAOs, this outsources execution strategy and MEV capture to a black box. The DAO treasury pays for inefficiency and loses sovereignty over its own transaction flow.

• Risk: Solvers (e.g., Across, 1inch) can extract value via MEV or poor routing.
• Impact: Treasury leakage and non-deterministic execution outcomes for critical governance actions.

Gasless interactions create clear, fundable beneficiaries (the user whose gas is paid). This creates a legal paper trail that regulators like the SEC can use to assert jurisdiction and define a centralized 'controller.' It undermines the legal ambiguity that protects permissionless protocols.

• Risk: DAOs using sponsored transactions become identifiable legal entities.
• Impact: Opens the door to securities law enforcement and dismantling of the decentralized facade.

Gasless voting lowers the cost of vote buying to near-zero. Adversaries can trivially fund infinite Sybil wallets to pass proposals. Existing solutions like Proof-of-Humanity or BrightID add friction, breaking the gasless promise and creating new centralized attestors.

• Risk: Governance attacks shift from capital-intensive to coordination-intensive, favoring well-funded whales.
• Impact: $1M could fund millions of gasless votes, making most token-based governance obsolete.

On Optimism, Arbitrum, or Base, the sequencer has the power to reorder or delay transactions. A gasless DAO living entirely on one L2 is at the mercy of its sequencer's (often a single entity like Offchain Labs) operational integrity and neutrality.

• Risk: A malicious or compromised sequencer can freeze DAO operations entirely.
• Impact: ~12s finality becomes meaningless if the sequencer is the adversary, reverting to a web2 trust model.

Each layer of abstraction (ERC-4337 Account Abstraction, Cross-chain messaging like LayerZero) adds a new trust assumption and failure mode. Complexity obscures risk. A gasless, multi-chain DAO becomes a fragile house of cards where a failure in any dependent protocol (e.g., Wormhole, CCIP) can cause total collapse.

• Risk: Systemic fragility increases non-linearly with each convenience layer.
• Impact: A single bridge hack or oracle failure could irreversibly corrupt governance state across chains.

Requiring users to hold and manage native gas tokens creates a massive onboarding and participation barrier. This excludes non-crypto-native members and bogs down governance with micro-payments.

• ~90% of potential contributors are blocked by wallet setup complexity.
• Gas price volatility makes budgeting for proposals or votes impossible for treasuries.
• Multi-chain DAOs force members to manage multiple token balances just to participate.

Let the DAO's treasury pay for gas in any token (including stablecoins) via smart contract sponsors. Users sign meta-transactions; a relayer network submits them, and the DAO reimburses costs.

• User pays zero gas: Submit votes or proposals with a simple signature.
• Treasury manages gas in bulk: Pay in USDC or its native token, simplifying accounting.
• Enables batched execution: Bundle hundreds of actions into one gas-efficient transaction via systems like EIP-4337 Account Abstraction and Safe{Wallet}.

Move from transaction submission to declaring desired outcomes. Users express an 'intent' (e.g., 'Vote Yes on Prop 42'), and a decentralized relayer network competes to fulfill it most efficiently.

• Removes operational complexity: No more failed TXs due to low gas.
• Enables cross-chain governance: Relayers (like Socket, Li.Fi) handle bridging and execution atomically.
• Creates a gas market: Relayers like Gelato and Biconomy optimize for cost and speed, subsidizing UX.

Gasless access lowers the cost of a sybil attack to zero. DAOs must pair gas abstraction with robust identity and reputation layers to prevent governance capture.

• Integrate proof-of-personhood: Leverage Worldcoin, BrightID, or Gitcoin Passport.
• Stake-weighted reputation: Use systems like Otterspace Badges or SourceCred to gate proposal rights.
• Progressive decentralization: Start with curated membership, automate gasless actions, then slowly expand permissions.

Gas becomes a predictable operational expense, not a user tax. This shifts the economic model and creates new infrastructure opportunities.

• Relayer services as SaaS: DAOs pay monthly fees for bundled gas and execution guarantees.
• Treasury management tools: Platforms like Llama and Colony must integrate gas budgeting.
• L2 & Appchain primacy: Gasless UX is a killer feature for DAO-focused chains like Arbitrum, Optimism, and Celo.

With gas and execution abstracted, DAOs evolve into always-on service entities. Smart agents execute approved intents automatically, reacting to market or governance conditions.

• Continuous operations: Treasury rebalancing, grant disbursements, and protocol parameter adjustments happen without manual transactions.
• Agent-driven governance: Frameworks like OpenAI's Agent SDK or Aragon OSx enable autonomous working groups.
• The DAO as an API: Other protocols can permissionlessly trigger its functions via signed intents, creating composable organizational logic.