2026-01-19 21:21:20

In the Web3 space, nothing is more love-hate than Gas fees. I often encounter an awkward deadlock on Ethereum: wanting to transfer $10 worth of USDT, but first having to top up $5 worth of ETH for the fee. This forced dual-token friction is like going to buy a newspaper, and the bank insists you buy a stamp first to pay—completely counterintuitive. I believe this counterintuitive design is the biggest engineering obstacle for cryptocurrency to evolve from a speculative tool into a daily payment method.

When looking at Plasma, this Layer 1 chain, I noticed it doesn't boast about TPS data but instead focuses on a highly pragmatic engineering solution: Paymaster (sponsorship mechanism).

In the Plasma architecture, transferring USDT is "zero fee." Sounds like marketing hype, right? But from an engineering perspective, there is no such thing as truly "free" on the blockchain. Every state change, signature verification, and byte of storage consumes the validator's computing power and bandwidth. The so-called "user free" is essentially a precise transfer of costs.

At the protocol level, Paymaster acts as an intelligent intermediary. When you initiate a transfer on the network, the Paymaster can pay the Gas fee on your behalf, then cover its own costs through other mechanisms (such as extracting a portion of stablecoin liquidity, earning settlement fee spreads, or receiving subsidies from the ecosystem incentive fund). This isn't free out of thin air; rather, the costs are distributed among ecosystem participants—somewhat like the fee system of Visa and merchants.

ETH-0.55%

View Original

This page may contain third-party content, which is provided for information purposes only (not representations/warranties) and should not be considered as an endorsement of its views by Gate, nor as financial or professional advice. See Disclaimer for details.

13 Likes

Reward
13
4
Repost
Share

Comment

0/400

MoneyBurnerSociety

· 5h ago

It's that same "cost shifting" trick again, and it's gotten so repetitive that it's making my ears calloused. But to be fair, Paymaster is indeed much more reliable than that reverse logic used by Ethereum.

View OriginalReply0

rugdoc.eth

· 5h ago

That gas fee system is really incredible. Transferring ten dollars still requires five dollars as a fee, and this logic is utterly absurd. To put it simply, paymaster is just passing the costs onto other ecosystem participants. It sounds good, but essentially it's a variant of cutting leeks.

View OriginalReply0

TokenomicsTinfoilHat

· 5h ago

Basically, it's just moving costs around, there's really no such thing as "zero fees." --- The gas fee system should have been changed long ago; we're being exploited every day. --- The Paymaster idea is pretty good; it's much better than those chains that hype TPS. --- Free things are always the most expensive; ecosystem participants will ultimately have to pay. --- Charging 5 yuan in fees for a 10 yuan transfer is truly absurd. --- Wow, cost shifting is played out quite elaborately, but users still have to pay in the end. --- Why not just use stablecoins to calculate fees directly? This complicated intermediary system is unnecessary. --- The Plasma idea is correct; it doesn't follow the hype of data, but honestly solves real problems. --- At the end of the day, it's still a zero-sum game; someone profits for free, while someone loses money. --- This Paymaster mechanism sounds like pyramid schemes... No, it's exactly a pyramid scheme.

View OriginalReply0

CryptoPhoenix

· 5h ago

It's another day of being drained by gas fees, but this wave of paymaster logic is indeed quite interesting... It's just a cost transfer, but it can ultimately help optimize the user experience.

View OriginalReply0