Bypassing the Gas Crisis: ERC-4337 Paymasters on L2 Networks
By Protocol Engineering · June 15, 2026 · 5 min read
The gas fee friction
One of the largest hurdles to mainstream blockchain adoption is gas fees. Forcing a user to buy and hold ETH or MATIC just to transfer USDC is a poor experience. If a user holds $50 of USDC, they should be able to send it immediately — without buying a gas token first.
Account abstraction & Paymasters
Furlpay leverages ERC-4337 account abstraction to solve this. Every Furlpay wallet is a deployed Safe smart-contract account. When a transaction is submitted:
- The transaction is packaged as a UserOperation.
- It is sent to a Paymaster contract on-chain.
- The Paymaster pays the network gas fee (in ETH) to the validator.
- The Paymaster then deducts the equivalent value in USDC from the transaction — or sponsors the fee entirely for promotional tiers.
[ User Action ] ──(USDC)──> [ Paymaster Contract ] ──(ETH gas paid)──> [ Blockchain Network ]
This gas abstraction makes stablecoin transactions feel exactly like traditional Web2 payments — smooth, fast and free of blockchain jargon.
Protocol Engineering
Furlpay
Written by the Furlpay team — engineers and compliance specialists building an on-chain financial operating system for stablecoin payments, travel, and investing on Arbitrum.
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