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What is Gas Sponsorship?

On Ethereum and EVM-compatible blockchains, every transaction requires gas—a fee paid in ETH to compensate the network for processing your transaction. This creates friction for new users who need to acquire ETH before they can do anything onchain. Gas sponsorship solves this by letting developers pay gas fees on behalf of their users. Instead of users needing ETH in their wallet, your application covers the cost. This creates a seamless, “gasless” experience similar to traditional web apps.

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How Paymasters Work

A Paymaster is a smart contract that sponsors gas fees for user transactions. It’s a core component of ERC-4337 Account Abstraction, which enables programmable transaction flows beyond what traditional EOA (Externally Owned Account) wallets can do. Here’s the flow:
  1. User initiates a transaction from a smart account (not an EOA)
  2. Bundler receives the userOperation and checks if a Paymaster will sponsor it
  3. Paymaster evaluates the request against your configured policies (allowlisted contracts, spend limits, etc.)
  4. If approved, the Paymaster pays the gas and the transaction executes
  5. You’re billed for the sponsored gas plus a 7% fee through your CDP account (monthly invoicing)
Gas sponsorship only works with smart accounts (ERC-4337), not traditional EOAs. With EIP-7702, EOAs can be upgraded to smart accounts to enable sponsorship. See the EIP-7702 FAQs for details.

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CDP Paymaster

The Coinbase Developer Platform Paymaster provides a fully-managed gas sponsorship service that includes:
  • Paymaster + Bundler in one endpoint — A single API endpoint handles both paymaster signing and transaction bundling
  • Policy controls — Configure contract allowlists, per-user limits, and global spend caps
  • Analytics & logs — Monitor sponsored transactions, gas usage, and costs
  • ERC-7677 compliant — Works with any compatible SDK or wallet (does not have to be paired with CDP Wallets)

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Supported Networks

CDP Paymaster currently supports Base Mainnet and Base Sepolia only.For other EVM networks, you can use any ERC-7677 compliant paymaster provider with CDP Smart Accounts.
NetworkStatus
Base Mainnet✅ Supported
Base Sepolia✅ Supported
Other EVM networksUse third-party ERC-7677 paymasters

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Get Started

1

Create a CDP account

Sign up for CDP or sign in to your existing account.
2

Get your Paymaster endpoint

Navigate to Paymaster under Onchain Tools in the left-nav. Copy your endpoint URL.
3

Configure your gas policy

Set up a contract allowlist to control which contracts you’ll sponsor transactions for. This protects against unintended sponsorship.
4

Integrate with your app

Follow the Quickstart to integrate gas sponsorship into your application.
5

Apply for gas credits

Apply for up to $15K in gas credits as part of the Base Gasless Campaign.

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Example Repository

See our examples on GitHub for integrations with popular SDKs including Viem, Permissionless, and more.

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Need Help?

Reach out in the #paymaster channel in the CDP Discord.