Ethereum plan lets others pay users’ gas fees

Ethereum developers and researchers are discussing a proposal that would let wallets, relayers or smart-contract paymasters cover on-chain gas fees in ETH for users while accepting payment in other tokens or stablecoins. The proposal extends account abstraction patterns such as ERC-4337 to allow a third party to sponsor the ETH validators require.

Under the approach a wallet or client packages a user’s intent into a single ‘user operation.’ A relayer or bundler submits that operation to the network and pays the gas in ETH. A paymaster contract reimburses the relayer according to rules it enforces. Reimbursement could be direct in ERC-20 tokens or stablecoins, or via an automated swap from those tokens into ETH depending on the paymaster’s configuration.

Because the protocol requires gas to be paid in ETH, relayers must receive ETH up front. Paymasters therefore need ways to convert incoming tokens into ETH and to manage pricing, slippage and custody. The proposal includes checks to confirm a paymaster’s ability to reimburse before a relayer fronts ETH and limits to reduce fraud and spam.

Security and concentration of sponsorship are topics in the discussion. Participants have noted the risk that a small number of paymasters or relayers could handle a large share of sponsored transactions or become targets if compromised. Proposed safeguards include whitelisting, deposit or staking requirements for paymasters, and on-chain verification steps that let relayers confirm reimbursement rules before submitting transactions.

The idea builds on past changes to Ethereum’s fee model, including EIP-1559, and on existing meta-transaction and gasless wallet experiments. Those earlier implementations showed payments in other assets are feasible at the application layer; the proposal aims to standardize the pattern across wallets, relayers and smart contracts.

Discussion is ongoing in developer forums and public repositories and there is no set timeline for protocol inclusion. Adoption will depend on code reviews, audits and demand from wallet providers, exchanges and decentralized app teams. If implemented, wallets could show fee amounts in token or fiat-equivalent terms and allow applications to subsidize or collect fees in non-ETH tokens.