// GLOSSARY -- BLOCKCHAIN & CRYPTO FUNDAMENTALS

What is Gas Sponsorship?

1 min read Updated

Gas sponsorship is the practice of a third party paying blockchain transaction gas fees on behalf of users — enabling gasless user experiences through paymasters, meta-transactions, or relayer networks.

WHY IT MATTERS

Gas sponsorship removes the biggest UX barrier in crypto: needing native tokens before you can do anything. Through ERC-4337 paymasters, dApps can pay gas for their users — the user interacts gas-free while the application absorbs or redirects the cost.

Sponsorship models include: full sponsorship (dApp pays all gas), token paymasters (user pays in USDC instead of ETH), and conditional sponsorship (free for certain actions, paid for others).

Gas sponsorship is becoming standard for consumer-facing dApps. Users shouldn't need to understand gas to use blockchain applications.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

How does gas sponsorship work?
Through paymasters (ERC-4337): the paymaster contract agrees to cover gas costs. The EntryPoint executes the user's operation and charges the paymaster instead of the user.
Who pays for sponsored gas?
The sponsoring entity — typically the dApp developer, funded through a paymaster deposit. It's a user acquisition cost, similar to offering free shipping in e-commerce.
Is gas sponsorship expensive?
On L2s, gas costs are fractions of a cent per transaction — sponsoring thousands of transactions costs dollars. On L1, costs are higher but still manageable for high-value operations.

FURTHER READING

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