Why 'Gasless' Transactions Are a Misleading Promise for Creators

Gasless is an abstraction: No transaction executes without paying network fees. Protocols like ERC-4337 Account Abstraction and Biconomy don't eliminate gas; they abstract payment to a third-party paymaster or sponsor.

Costs shift, not vanish: The economic burden moves from the end-user to the application or a centralized relayer, creating new business model dependencies and potential centralization risks.

Evidence: The Polygon PoS chain processes millions of sponsored transactions monthly, but the gas is paid by dApp treasuries, creating a scalable user acquisition cost that must be monetized later.

Gasless is a UX abstraction. The promise of 'gasless' transactions for creators is a marketing illusion. No protocol can eliminate the L1 settlement cost or the validator's computational work. The cost is merely shifted from the end-user to a sponsor, like a dApp treasury or a paymaster contract.

The cost-shifting mechanism is explicit. Protocols like ERC-4337 (Account Abstraction) and Solana's versioned transactions formalize this. A paymaster or a dApp's relayer pays the gas fee on behalf of the user, creating a business model liability that must be recouped through fees, token inflation, or venture capital subsidies.

Creators bear the ultimate cost. When a platform like Manifold or Zora offers 'gasless' mints, they are subsidizing the transaction. This cost is factored into their platform fees or tokenomics, creating a hidden tax on creator revenue that is less transparent than a direct gas payment.

Evidence: The paymaster subsidy model. On networks like Polygon, dApps using the Gas Station Network (GSN) pay for user gas from a pooled wallet. This creates a finite runway; when the wallet empties, the 'gasless' experience stops. The cost is not gone, it is prepaid and amortized.

Gas sponsorship is a user acquisition cost that creators must treat as a marketing expense, not a permanent feature. Protocols like Pimlico's Account Abstraction and Biconomy sell this as a service, but the sponsor always pays the final gas bill.

The 'gasless' promise creates vendor lock-in. A creator's application becomes dependent on the sponsor's wallet infrastructure, whether it's a Safe{Wallet} or a custom ERC-4337 bundler. Migrating away requires forcing users to fund wallets.

Sponsorship liability is uncapped. A viral event or a gas spike on Ethereum L1 can bankrupt a sponsor's wallet. This is not hypothetical; Polygon's gas sponsorship programs have required strict limits to prevent this.

Evidence: The Arbitrum Odyssey event in 2022 congested the network and caused sponsor gas costs to soar, forcing a pause. It proved that scaling sponsorship requires scaling a treasury.

Gasless is a misnomer. Every on-chain transaction consumes gas; 'gasless' systems like ERC-4337 Account Abstraction or Biconomy simply shift the payment burden to a third-party relayer or the dApp itself. The creator's platform now bears the operational cost and complexity of managing gas budgets and relay infrastructure.

This creates a new rent-seeker. The entity sponsoring the gas—be it a platform like OpenSea or a paymaster service—becomes a centralized gatekeeper. They control transaction ordering, can censor users, and will inevitably extract value via hidden fees or data monetization to offset their costs, mirroring Web2 ad-based models.

The UX trade-off is severe. To manage unpredictable gas costs, these systems introduce session keys or batched transactions, which increase smart contract risk and complexity. A creator's 'free' mint now depends on the sponsor's relayers being online and uncensored, a single point of failure.

Evidence: Platforms using Gelato Network or Stackup for gas sponsorship see 30-40% of gas costs eaten by relay fees and overhead. The final cost to the creator, either in direct fees or platform revenue share, is often higher than if they paid the base L2 gas fee themselves.

Gasless is a subsidy model. Protocols like Biconomy and Gelato abstract gas by having a relayer pay on the user's behalf. This creates a superior UX but shifts the economic burden to the dApp treasury, which must fund and manage the relayer infrastructure.

The cost doesn't vanish, it centralizes. This model creates new operational risks for creators, including managing private keys for relayers, monitoring gas price spikes, and ensuring perpetual funding. It's operational debt disguised as innovation.

Account abstraction (ERC-4337) changes the calculus. With native sponsored transactions, the protocol itself can securely define sponsorship rules via paymasters, reducing reliance on centralized relayers. This moves the cost from operational overhead to a clear protocol-level line item.

Evidence: The failure of dApps that offered 'free' transactions shows the model's fragility. When ETH gas prices spiked to 200+ gwei, their relayers drained funds in hours, forcing emergency shutdowns and breaking user trust.