GlossaryAdvanced
Paymaster
A smart contract that can pay transaction fees on behalf of a smart account's user, potentially in a different token or for free.
A paymaster is a smart contract that can pay a transaction's gas fee on behalf of a smart account's (see Kaavon's "Smart Account" glossary definition) user — potentially letting the user pay in a different token than the network's native gas asset, or letting an application sponsor the fee entirely for its users.
This is specifically possible because account abstraction separates who authorizes a transaction from who actually pays for it, a flexibility a standard wallet paying gas directly from its own native-asset balance doesn't have.
Examples
- A paymaster could let a user pay a transaction's gas fee in a stablecoin, rather than needing to hold the network's native gas token at all.
- An application might use a paymaster to sponsor new users' first few transactions entirely, removing the need to acquire gas tokens before using the app.