How to offer gasless transactions to your users

Gas is the last step nobody warned them about

Your product works. The user signed up, understood the pitch, reached the screen where they act — and then a message asks them to hold BNB, POL or ETH in their wallet. They do not have any. They do not know what it is. And they are not going to find out right now.

That is where most on-chain conversion is lost, and it has nothing to do with the amounts involved: on BNB Chain or Polygon an operation costs cents. The problem is not the price, it is requiring the user to acquire a specific asset before they can use your product.

Sponsoring gas removes that requirement. This piece is about doing it in practice: the model, the integration, abuse control, real cost, and the cases where it is not worth it.

The model: prepaid, one deposit, charged on consumption

The design mirrors infrastructure credit. You keep a native-currency balance; each sponsored operation draws from it whatever gas the network actually charged.

Three points matter more than the rest:

• One deposit serves several networks. No separate treasury per chain. Today the service covers BSC, Polygon, Base, Arbitrum and Ethereum from a single deposit.
• You are charged real gas, with no markup. You pay what the network charged. Part returns as cashback credit, applied first on later transactions.
• The user still signs. Gas sponsorship is not custody. The key never leaves the user, and they are the one authorizing the operation.

It is worth repeating what the concept piece says, because this is the part most often misread: gas does not become free. It becomes your cost, booked as acquisition, instead of the user's obstacle.

Why EIP-7702 rather than a wallet migration

There are two ways to give someone gasless transactions. The first is to create a new smart account for them and ask them to move their funds there. The second is to let the account they already have temporarily delegate to a contract, keeping address and key.

EIP-7702 is what makes the second possible. The difference is not technical, it is product: asking for a wallet migration to solve gas friction trades one friction for another, usually larger. The people who understand smart accounts are not the people who get stuck on gas.

If you want the mechanism itself — UserOperation, EntryPoint, the paymaster's role — it is in what is a paymaster.

The integration, in three moves

npm install @vkx/gas

The flow always has the same shape:

1. Your server requests the sponsorship. You describe the user's operation and the network. The call comes from your backend, because that is where your secret key belongs — never in the app. 2. The user signs their own operation. Nothing changes for them: same wallet, same address. 3. The transaction is submitted. The sponsorship covers the fee; your account is debited for real consumption.

The dashboard shows balance, per-network consumption and per-operation history — which is what you need to treat this as a cost line rather than a black box.

Abuse control is not optional

This is the part usually missing from first implementations. If any request can trigger an operation you pay for, your balance is a public resource. Someone will find it.

Three controls handle most of the risk:

• Limits per user and per window. Not "how many operations in total", but how many per user per hour or per day.
• An allowlist of operations. Sponsor specific calls — your contract's mint, your reward's claim — not arbitrary calls.
• A per-operation cost ceiling. An operation that should cost cents and is costing dollars is a signal something is wrong; cut it before paying.

It is also worth separating budget per network. Ethereum's cost is a different order of magnitude, and a congestion spike there should not drain the balance that keeps BNB Chain running.

Real cost, in orders of magnitude

An exact number depends on congestion and call complexity, and any fixed promise would be imprecise. What can be stated safely is the order of magnitude: on low-cost networks such as BNB Chain, Polygon, Base and Arbitrum, ordinary token and mint operations land in the cents. On Ethereum, depending on the moment, they land orders of magnitude higher.

The number that matters is not cost per transaction, it is cost per activated user. If sponsoring three operations per user costs a few cents and prevents losing half your signups at the gas step, the comparison is not against zero — it is against the acquisition cost you already pay to bring that user in.

When it is not worth it

Being honest about this saves money:

• Audiences already operating on-chain. People who keep a native balance and transact on their own do not get stuck on gas. Sponsoring there subsidizes people who do not need it.
• High-value, low-frequency operations. If the user is moving meaningful value, gas is not what stops them.
• Flows that depend on native value. Sending the network's own coin still requires a balance; sponsorship covers the fee, not the transferred value.
• Before you have abuse control. Turning on unlimited sponsorship is an operational risk, not a product optimization.

FAQ

Does the user have to switch wallets? No. With EIP-7702 delegation, their own account supports the sponsored operation — same address, same key.

Does this make me a custodian of funds? No. You pay the network fee. The key and the signature stay exclusively with the user.

Do I need one deposit per network? No. A single native-currency deposit covers the EVM networks served.

How do I stop someone from draining my balance? Limits per user and per time window, an allowlist of operations, and a per-operation cost ceiling. Without those three, do not turn sponsorship on.

What does it cost per transaction? The real gas consumed, no markup, with part returning as credit. On low-cost networks, cents per operation.

Does it work for NFT mints and in-game items? Yes, and that is where the gain shows up fastest. The case is detailed in NFT mints and gasless games.

Next step

If gas is the step between your user and their first action, the shortest path is measuring how many abandon at that point today. After that the decision is easy. Integration details and pricing are on the VKX Gas page.

Disclaimer: this content is informational and educational and does not constitute investment advice.