What is gasless transaction (meta-transactions) flow and who pays fees?

On a project I tried, gasless (meta) transactions let you sign an action and skip paying gas yourself. A relayer picks up your signed message, posts the tx to the chain, and pays the gas. Fees are covered by the relayer or sponsor (or you reimburse later in tokens via the contract).

Gasless meta-transactions let users act without paying gas themselves. I tried this while building a wallet-based game, onboarding users who didn’t own ETH. Here’s the flow we landed on.

- User signs a meta-tx payload: contract address, function call, params, nonce, and a max gas the relayer should cover.
- A relayer picks up the signed payload and submits the on-chain transaction with their own ETH to pay the gas.
- The contract verifies the signature and nonce, then executes the requested function as if the user sent it directly.
- The gas bill is paid by a sponsor/paymaster. Reimbursement to the relayer happens off-chain or via tokens, depending on the setup. The relayer gets paid by the dApp’s treasury or a sponsor, not the user.
- Tools I used: Gas Station Network (GSN) or Biconomy to connect user intent to relay infrastructure.

Tips and pitfalls: gas price spikes can drain the sponsor budget; if funds run dry, txs fail. You’ll need solid nonce/replay protection and a cap on gas. Start with a small feature, test on testnets, and have a clear reimbursement plan with relayers so the UX stays smooth.

In my dApp, users sign a message; a relayer submits the txn and pays gas, then is reimbursed by a sponsor or contract.