Gas Fees and Transaction Signing: Hurdles to Crypto Adoption
In cryptocurrency and DeFi businesses, signing each transaction and paying gas fees pose significant challenges. Vara has introduced a new feature to tackle these issues. Despite many crypto natives accepting these tasks as routine, they remain barriers to adoption. This obstacle could deter less tech-savvy consumers from embracing digital assets.
Even if a lot of crypto natives have long since come to terms with the fact that signing transactions and paying gas fees are just a part of using digital assets, this remains a significant barrier to adoption that may prevent less tech-savvy consumers from adopting them.
Although transaction fees are a vital part of the cryptocurrency world, it is unnecessary for users to have to pay for their gas in a particular token even when they aren’t using it. This would confuse many new users and discourage them from using cryptocurrencies entirely. For example, a transaction will not be completed if the user wants to spend USDC tokens on Ethereum but does not have enough ETH in their wallet to cover the gas price. But what if that person is still ignorant about cryptocurrencies and has never heard of Ethereum? It makes it more likely that they’ll give up using cryptocurrencies entirely.
Friction in the Fun: Gas Fees and Transaction Hassles Hinder Blockchain Gaming Adoption
Because of this, gas prices represent a significant barrier to entry. For example, a lot of blockchain-based games employ their native currencies for in-game transactions, but since they run on a blockchain like Ethereum or Solana, users have to carry two separate tokens. That increases the level of difficulty and creates a big obstacle for new players to go beyond.
Additionally, you must sign every cryptocurrency transaction by entering a password into your wallet. The last thing a player wants to do when playing a blockchain game is have to continuously input their password every five minutes in order to pay for products or place bets using the in-game currency. But it’s still required.
Simpler Transactions
Vara tackles this issue with its innovative Payless and Signless transaction features. These features eliminate inconveniences and reduce gas prices. Additionally, they enhance customer privacy. The objective is to streamline the user interface and boost dApp adoption. This targets users familiar with Web2’s conveniences.
Vara came up with the idea of “vouchers,” which are tokens that developers may offer to new users to enable Signless and Payless transactions without requiring a specific cryptocurrency to be in their wallet. As long as the user has a valid voucher, they can be used to prepay for gas costs and conduct transactions at all times. The plan is for developers to offer them up for free to their users.
Transactions without payment
The first benefit these vouchers offer is the elimination of the necessity for users to pay gas fees directly, allowing them to begin exploring the ecosystem of any dApp with the least amount of fuss.
A user will only need to hold the token they are using for spending when they have a voucher in their wallet. The dApp developer will pay the actual gas costs; they can recoup this investment by using monetization techniques like adverts and subscriptions. Because it opens up additional users for developers’ dApps, paying users’ gas payments in advance is an investment.
According to Vara, this approach is comparable to Web2, where developers must first rent server space for their apps before making up the difference through advertising, in-app purchases, or subscriptions.
Using Vara’s vouchers has several benefits, one of which is that paying for petrol in front can result in significant cost savings, which lowers expenses for end users. In the meantime, the dApp itself becomes simpler to use, which could lead to a faster rate of user growth.
Vara asserts payless transactions benefit various Web3 scenarios. For instance, developers can offer initial freebies for users to engage in blockchain-based games hassle-free. Players can immediately participate without purchasing tokens, as there are no gas fees. This encourages them to purchase tokens later, especially if they enjoy the game. Additionally, payless transactions facilitate easier microtransactions in DeFi, promoting more frequent trading and payments. Vara initially implemented payless transactions in its Battleship Game, testing them intermittently to prevent abuse.
Transactions without signs
The requirement to sign each cryptocurrency transaction is a big pain point in addition to gas fees. This can be particularly annoying for some types of dApps, such as trading sites and games where users constantly need to spend in-game tokens.
Vara solves these annoying recurring tasks by allowing dApp users to engage with dApps without ever having to sign in, thanks to its Signless Transactions feature. Because the dApp can never view the token balance in the user’s wallet, this functionality not only improves the user experience but also gives users more privacy.
Vouchers are a tool that dApp developers can use to give users limited-time access to their dApps, eliminating the need for human transaction signatures. They stay logged into the dApp without really logging in.
Vara claims that signless transactions facilitate frequent microtransactions. Consequently, this could boost dApp utilization for real-world purposes. For instance, tipping online creators and purchasing coffee may become more common. Furthermore, this functionality might encourage users to share personal information with researchers. In exchange, they could receive cryptocurrency rewards, allowing anonymous contribution of health data. Another possible application is anonymous voting, which would increase election security and privacy.
The introduction of Signless and Payless transactions is a small but significant improvement that may help increase Web3 usage. Vara brings with it unprecedented privacy while mimicking the simplicity that has come to define Web2 in terms of accessing and interacting with any Web3 dApp.
