Gasless Voting

A two-phase process where users first submit a commit (a hash of their vote) cheaply, then later reveal their actual vote. Gas costs are concentrated in the reveal phase, which can be batched or sponsored. This enhances privacy during the voting period and can reduce upfront costs.

• Process: Commit (low gas) → Reveal (higher gas, can be batched).
• Benefit: Privacy-preserving and can optimize gas timing.
• Use Case: Suitable for sensitive governance decisions.

Major DeFi protocols that implemented gasless delegation and voting. Users can delegate their voting power without an on-chain transaction. Actual proposal voting often uses a relayer network to submit bundled votes, eliminating gas costs for the voter.

• Key Feature: Vote delegation is signature-based, separating power assignment from voting.
• Architecture: Employs a forwarder contract to validate off-chain signatures and pay gas.

Governance aggregator platforms that provide user interfaces and tools for interacting with various DAOs. They integrate gasless voting features by default, allowing users to sign votes which the platform relays.

• Key Feature: Unified dashboard for managing governance across multiple protocols.
• Function: Acts as a meta-governance layer, abstracting gas costs and transaction complexity for end-users.

Core Ethereum standards enabling advanced gasless patterns. EIP-712 provides a standard for typed message signing, the foundation for off-chain votes. EIP-4337 (Account Abstraction) allows sponsored transactions, where a DAO or dApp can pay gas for users.

• Mechanism: Paves the way for native gasless voting where users sign UserOperations bundled by a paymaster.
• Impact: Could make gasless voting a default feature for all smart contract wallets.

By removing the requirement to pay transaction fees (gas), gasless voting makes participation accessible to all token holders, regardless of their wallet balance. This is critical for:

• Smaller stakeholders who might otherwise be priced out of governance.
• High-frequency voting on numerous proposals without accumulating cost.
• Fostering more equitable and representative decision-making by decoupling voting power from the ability to pay network fees.

Gasless mechanisms significantly increase voter participation rates by simplifying the user experience to a single signature. This creates a more robust and legitimate governance process. Furthermore, it can improve security by:

• Reducing the incentive for vote selling or delegation-for-fee scenarios.
• Enabling seamless integration with multi-signature wallets or smart contract accounts without complex gas abstraction logic.

The voting process is reduced from a complex blockchain transaction to a simple cryptographic signature. This UX improvement lowers the cognitive load for users and integrates smoothly with existing web2 mental models. Benefits include:

• No need for native gas tokens (e.g., ETH, MATIC) in the voter's wallet.
• Batch voting on multiple proposals with one off-chain message.
• Mobile-friendly interactions without worrying about network congestion fees.

Gasless architectures unlock sophisticated governance models that are impractical with fee-on-every-vote systems. These include:

• Quadratic voting and other cost-intensive mechanisms where calculating marginal cost per vote is prohibitive with gas.
• Real-time, sentiment-based polling or temperature checks without financial commitment.
• Delegated voting systems where delegates can vote on behalf of many without bearing massive gas costs.

By settling votes in batches or using Layer 2 solutions and validators to submit aggregated results, gasless voting minimizes the on-chain footprint. This leads to:

• Lower overall gas costs for the protocol treasury, which often subsidizes the voting.
• Reduced network congestion during active governance periods.
• Faster finality for vote results when using optimized data compression and submission techniques.

Gasless voting is a cornerstone for omnichain governance, where token holders on multiple blockchains can participate in a unified process. It solves the critical issue of requiring different gas tokens on different chains. Implementation often relies on:

• Off-chain message protocols (e.g., using EIP-712 signatures).
• Relayer networks or oracles to bridge and submit votes.
• Layer 0 interoperability protocols to coordinate consensus across ecosystems.

Gasless transactions rely on relayers to pay fees on behalf of users, creating a potential centralization point. A malicious or compromised relayer could censor transactions by refusing to submit votes from certain addresses. Mitigation strategies include decentralized relay networks, permissionless relayers, and cryptoeconomic incentives to ensure liveness and neutrality.

By removing the financial cost of voting, gasless systems become more susceptible to Sybil attacks, where a single entity creates many identities to manipulate governance outcomes. Defenses are critical and include:

• Proof-of-Personhood (e.g., World ID)
• Token-weighted voting (cost shifts to token ownership)
• Reputation-based systems
• Bonding mechanisms for proposal submission

A sustainable economic model for relayers is non-trivial. They incur real gas costs and require compensation. Common models include:

• Sponsored transactions funded by the dApp or DAO treasury.
• Meta-transactions with fee abstraction, where users pay in an ERC-20 token.
• Paymasters in Account Abstraction (ERC-4337) that can sponsor specific operations. Poor design can lead to relayers exiting or exploiting the system.

Implementing gasless voting adds significant complexity to the smart contract stack. It introduces new components like signature verification, nonce management, and relayer logic. Each new contract and interaction increases the attack surface for exploits, requiring more extensive audits and formal verification. The user experience must also seamlessly handle potential transaction failures at the relayer layer.

While gas costs are a barrier, removing them entirely may lower the perceived 'stake' in an outcome, potentially reducing thoughtful participation (voter apathy). The ease of voting could lead to low-influence voting or delegation to default options without proper consideration, degrading the overall quality of governance decisions. This is a behavioral challenge distinct from the technical ones.

Gasless voting does not make transactions free for the network; it shifts who pays. During periods of high network congestion, relayers may face prohibitive gas prices, causing vote submission delays or failures. This can disenfranchise voters if votes are time-sensitive. Systems must implement priority fee strategies or have sufficient capital reserves to ensure votes are processed during critical governance periods.

A foundational pattern for gasless interactions. A user signs a transaction message off-chain, which is then submitted to the network by a relayer who pays the gas fee. This decouples the signer from the fee payer, enabling gasless voting. Key components include:

• Signed Message: The user's intent (e.g., a vote) with a cryptographic signature.
• Relayer: A server or contract that broadcasts the signed message and pays the gas.
• Verification Contract: A smart contract that validates the signature and executes the user's intent.

A standard enabling smart contract wallets as primary accounts. It is a core enabler for advanced gasless voting by allowing:

• Sponsored Transactions: A third party (a paymaster) can cover a user's gas fees.
• Batch Operations: Multiple actions (like voting on several proposals) can be bundled into a single gasless transaction.
• Session Keys: Users can pre-approve a set of governance actions for a limited time without signing each one.

The mechanism by which gas fees are covered for end-users. In gasless voting, a DAO treasury, project foundation, or designated paymaster contract acts as the sponsor. This involves:

• Fee Logic: The sponsor defines rules for which transactions or users are eligible for gas reimbursement.
• ERC-20 Gas Payments: Fees can be paid in the network's native token or an ERC-20 token.
• Voter Incentives: Sponsorship removes a key barrier to participation, aiming to increase governance turnout and decentralization.

The cryptographic foundation for secure off-chain message signing. EIP-712 provides a standard for structured data hashing and signing, which is critical for gasless voting because:

• Human-Readable Signing: Presents voters with a clear, formatted representation of their vote (proposal ID, choice) before signing.
• Replay Protection: Includes domain separators to prevent signatures from being reused on different chains or contracts.
• Security: Offers stronger guarantees than simple eth_sign for verifying voter intent.

The operational layer that processes and submits gasless transactions. For a gasless voting system to be robust, it requires reliable relay infrastructure. This includes:

• Decentralized Relayers: Networks like Gelato or Biconomy that provide reliable, decentralized transaction submission.
• Censorship Resistance: A distributed network of relayers prevents any single entity from blocking vote submissions.
• Gas Price Management: Relayers optimize gas prices and handle transaction failures to ensure votes are processed promptly and cost-effectively.