Solidity-based chains (Ethereum, Arbitrum, Polygon) excel at leveraging a mature, battle-tested ecosystem for gas abstraction. Standards like ERC-4337 for Account Abstraction and protocols like Biconomy or Etherspot enable paymasters to sponsor transactions using stablecoins or ERC-20 tokens. This is proven at scale, with ERC-4337 bundlers processing millions of user operations. The trade-off is complexity: abstraction is built atop the EVM as a secondary layer, introducing relayers and additional smart contract calls that can increase latency and gas overhead for the sponsor.
LABS
Comparisons
Move vs Solidity for Native Token Gas Payment Abstraction
A technical analysis comparing Move's first-class resource model for native gas coin abstraction against Solidity's ERC-20 wrapper patterns and paymaster contracts. Evaluates architectural security, developer experience, and implementation trade-offs for CTOs and protocol architects.
Chainscore © 2026
introduction
THE ANALYSIS
Introduction: The Core Architectural Divide
The choice between Move and Solidity for native token gas payment abstraction is a foundational decision that dictates your protocol's user experience, security model, and economic flexibility.
Move-based chains (Sui, Aptos) take a different, more fundamental approach by baking gas abstraction into the core protocol. The TxContext and native sponsorship features allow any transaction's gas to be paid by another on-chain account without extra smart contract logic. This results in superior efficiency and atomic execution, but at the cost of ecosystem maturity. While frameworks like Sui's ZkLogin enable Google/OAuth-sponsored gas, the tooling and service provider landscape (e.g., paymaster as a service) is less developed than Ethereum's.
The key trade-off: If your priority is immediate deployment within a vast ecosystem with established services (like Safe, Biconomy) and your users primarily hold ERC-20 tokens, the Solidity/ERC-4337 path is robust. If you prioritize architectural elegance, lower latency abstraction, and are building a new application where you control the economic model, Move's native sponsorship provides a cleaner, more efficient foundation. The decision hinges on ecosystem leverage versus foundational design.
tldr-summary
SOLIDITY VS MOVE
TL;DR: Key Differentiators at a Glance
A high-level comparison of the two dominant smart contract languages for implementing native token gas payment abstraction, based on ecosystem maturity, security paradigms, and developer experience.
01
Choose Solidity for Ecosystem Maturity
Dominant Market Share: Powers >90% of DeFi TVL (e.g., Uniswap, Aave, Lido). This matters for protocols requiring deep liquidity and a vast array of battle-tested dependencies like OpenZeppelin libraries and Chainlink oracles. The tooling (Hardhat, Foundry) and audit firms are industry-standard.
02
Choose Move for Built-in Security & Abstraction
Resource-Oriented Model: Assets are non-copyable, non-droppable types stored directly in user accounts, preventing reentrancy and double-spend bugs by design. This is critical for high-value financial primitives like native stablecoins or institutional-grade custody. Gas abstraction is a first-class concept in the Aptos and Sui Move VMs.
03
Choose Solidity for Developer Velocity
Massive Talent Pool: Over 20,000 monthly active devs and a decade of tutorials/forks. This matters for rapid prototyping and hiring. The EVM's simple account model and permissive typing allow for fast iteration, though it shifts security burden to the developer. Standards like ERC-4337 for account abstraction are EVM-native.
04
Choose Move for Parallel Execution & Scale
Inherently Parallelizable: Move's static data ownership analysis allows blockchains like Sui and Aptos to execute non-conflicting transactions in parallel, achieving 100k+ TPS in benchmarks. This is essential for mass-consumer dApps (gaming, social) where user actions are independent and gas costs must be minimal and predictable.
NATIVE GAS PAYMENT ABSTRACTION
Feature Comparison: Move vs Solidity for Gas Abstraction
Direct comparison of architectural capabilities for implementing gas fee sponsorship and payment in native tokens.
| Metric / Feature | Move (e.g., Aptos, Sui) | Solidity (e.g., Ethereum, Arbitrum) |
|---|---|---|
Native Token Gas Payment | ||
Built-in Account Abstraction | ||
Gas Sponsorship Standard | Native via | Requires EIP-4337 Bundlers |
Gas Estimation Complexity | Deterministic | Probabilistic (varies with congestion) |
Transaction Pre-execution | ||
Gas Fee Predictability | Fixed unit (Octas) | Dynamic (Gwei) |
Key Developer Libraries | Aptos SDK, Sui Move | Ethers.js, Viem, Web3.py |
pros-cons-a
MOVE VS SOLIDITY
Move's Resource Model: Pros and Cons
Key architectural differences and trade-offs for implementing gas fee abstraction at the protocol level.
01
Move's Key Strength: Native Asset Safety
Linear types and resource semantics prevent double-spending and accidental destruction of gas tokens. The Coin type is a first-class citizen, making fee abstraction logic inherently safer. This matters for protocols building custom fee markets or sponsored transactions where token custody is critical.
02
Move's Key Strength: Predictable Gas Costs
Bytecode verification at publish-time allows for precise gas metering based on operations, not storage slots. This enables more accurate estimation for complex fee payment flows. This matters for enterprise applications requiring strict cost predictability and wallet providers building transaction simulations.
03
Solidity's Key Strength: Ecosystem Tooling
Mature standards (EIP-4337) and infrastructure like Biconomy, Stackup, and Candide provide battle-tested Account Abstraction SDKs. Over 10M+ smart accounts have been deployed using these tools. This matters for teams needing rapid deployment and integration with existing wallets (MetaMask, Rainbow).
04
Solidity's Key Strength: EVM Composability
Universal interoperability across 50+ EVM chains via shared tooling (Ethers.js, Viem) and bridges. A gas abstraction module on Arbitrum can be easily ported to Polygon or Base. This matters for multi-chain protocols and developers prioritizing reach over architectural purity.
pros-cons-b
Move vs Solidity for Native Token Gas Payment Abstraction
Solidity's ERC-20 Pattern: Pros and Cons
Key strengths and trade-offs at a glance for implementing gas fee abstraction using native tokens.
01
Solidity's ERC-20: Ubiquitous Standard
Massive Ecosystem Integration: Over $500B+ in TVL across DeFi protocols like Uniswap, Aave, and Compound is built on ERC-20. This ensures instant compatibility with existing wallets (MetaMask), oracles (Chainlink), and infrastructure. This matters for projects requiring immediate liquidity and user access.
02
Solidity's ERC-20: Battle-Tested Security
Extensive Audit History: The ERC-20 standard and its security patterns have been scrutinized for 8+ years, with formal verification tools like Certora and MythX offering mature support. This matters for high-value financial applications where contract safety is non-negotiable and audit costs are justified.
03
Move's Native Asset: First-Class Resource
Built-in Security & Abstraction: In Move (e.g., Aptos, Sui), a native token like APT is a resource type with built-in scarcity and transfer semantics, preventing accidental duplication or loss. Gas payment abstraction (e.g., sponsoring transactions) is a core feature, not a post-hoc add-on. This matters for seamless user onboarding and secure financial primitives.
04
Move's Native Asset: Parallel Execution Ready
Designed for Scale: Move's resource-oriented model and explicit data dependency declaration enable deterministic parallel execution. This allows networks like Sui to achieve 100k+ TPS for simple payments. This matters for applications demanding high-throughput, low-latency transactions without MEV-prone mempools.
05
ERC-20's Limitation: Abstraction as an Afterthought
High Gas & Complexity: Implementing gas fee payment in a different ERC-20 token requires complex meta-transaction relayers (OpenGSN, Biconomy) or EIP-4337 Account Abstraction, adding overhead, centralization risks, and cost. This matters for projects where user experience and cost efficiency are primary constraints.
06
Move's Limitation: Nascent Tooling & Liquidity
Ecosystem Maturity Gap: While growing, the Move ecosystem (Aptos, Sui) has significantly less TVL (<$5B combined), fewer audited protocol templates (e.g., fewer battle-tested AMMs like Uniswap V3), and a smaller developer pool. This matters for projects that cannot afford to build core DeFi infrastructure from scratch.
MOVE VS SOLIDITY
Technical Deep Dive: Implementation Patterns
A direct comparison of the Move and Solidity programming models for implementing native token gas payment abstraction, focusing on architectural trade-offs for protocol architects.
Yes, Move's resource-oriented model provides stronger security guarantees by design. It prevents double-spending and accidental loss of gas tokens through linear types and explicit resource semantics. Solidity relies on developer discipline and patterns like transfer/send or ERC-20 approve, which are prone to reentrancy and approval front-running attacks. For a critical system like gas payment, Move's compile-time checks for resource safety are a decisive advantage.
CHOOSE YOUR PRIORITY
Decision Framework: When to Choose Which
Move for DeFi
Verdict: Superior for complex, composable protocols requiring formal verification and asset-centric security. Strengths: Move's resource-oriented model treats assets as non-copyable, non-droppable objects, preventing critical vulnerabilities like reentrancy and double-spending by design. This is ideal for high-value DeFi primitives. The Move Prover allows formal verification of contract invariants, a key requirement for protocols managing billions in TVL. However, the ecosystem is nascent, with fewer battle-tested libraries than Solidity's (e.g., OpenZeppelin).
Solidity for DeFi
Verdict: The pragmatic choice for speed-to-market, liquidity access, and leveraging the mature Ethereum ecosystem. Strengths: Unmatched liquidity and composability within the Ethereum L1/L2 landscape (e.g., Uniswap, Aave, Compound). A vast array of audited, forked contracts and tools (Hardhat, Foundry) accelerate development. Native ERC-20 token standard integration is seamless. The primary trade-off is inheriting Ethereum's security model, which requires rigorous manual auditing to mitigate risks Solidity's permissive type system allows.
verdict
THE ANALYSIS
Final Verdict and Strategic Recommendation
A strategic breakdown of Move's architectural approach versus Solidity's ecosystem dominance for implementing native token gas payment abstraction.
Move excels at secure, native abstraction by design, treating gas fees as a first-class resource. Its linear type system and Coin standard prevent double-spending of the fee token within a single transaction, offering provable safety for protocols like aptos_framework::gas_coin_payer. This built-in security is a core reason for its adoption in high-asset environments like the Aptos and Sui blockchains, which prioritize secure asset handling over raw throughput.
Solidity takes a different approach by leveraging its massive ecosystem and composability. Gas abstraction is achieved through smart contract standards like ERC-4337 Account Abstraction and paymasters, or via protocol-level integrations on L2s like Arbitrum and Optimism. This results in a trade-off: immense flexibility and a vast tooling landscape (OpenZeppelin, Biconomy) versus a more complex security surface, as the safety depends on the correct implementation of individual smart contracts rather than the language itself.
The key trade-off: If your priority is architectural security and formal verification for high-value financial applications, choose Move. Its native constructs reduce critical bugs. If you prioritize developer velocity, ecosystem liquidity, and existing user bases (e.g., migrating an Ethereum-native community), choose Solidity. Its mature tooling and standards like ERC-20 for fee tokens provide a faster path to market, albeit with a greater audit burden.
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