Bitcoin’s smart-contract-enabled sidechain RSK is introducing the idea of meta-transactions, which allow third parties to pay for a consumer’s transaction fees.
Announced on Thursday, the”RIF Enveloping” solution enables wallet providers to cover their users’ transactions. Paying trade fees is currently a major bottleneck in the adoption of contract programs. Users wanting to exchange tokens must always have some components of the blockchain’s native money — for example, Ether (ETH) for Ethereum and Smart Bitcoin (RBTC) for RSK.
Bright contracts using the technology can opt to subsidize the user’s gas fee completely or request payment with tokens. The technology will be incorporated with Beexo Wallet, one of the chief wallet providers for RSK.
Similar options exist on Ethereum as well, utilizing OpenZeppelin’s Gas Station Network. Wallets that use it comprise Argent, which utilizes smart contracts to keep the user’s tokens. While the firm used to subsidize gas prices completely, the skyrocketing costs on Ethereum led them to discontinue the program. Nonetheless, despite their apparent benefits, meta-transactions have yet to achieve substantial adoption on Ethereum.
“One of the chief reasons why RIF Enveloping could have wider adoption compared to comparable solutions in the Ethereum ecosystem is the solution has been jointly designed with wallet providers such as Beexo, Defiant, Money on Chain, RSK Swap and large communities of users like Taringa, to optimize efficiency.”
He also explained that RSK’s alternative has a technological advantage. Meta-transactions on Ethereum demand redeploying contracts or using proxies, while RIF Enveloping can use almost any existing token or contract.
RSK features a growing ecosystem for decentralized finance. The recent launch of Sovryn brought a complete package of trading and financing products, whilst existing platforms such as Money on Chain or RSK Swap recreated core DeFi jobs on Ethereum such as MakerDAO or Uniswap.
