Gas & Fees

Transient Storage Opcodes

Transactions use cheaper temporary storage that persists only within the transaction — invisible to users but enables lower gas costs. Design implications: not directly user-facing, but enables cheaper reentrancy-protected swaps, lower gas estimates for complex multi-step transactions, simpler single-tx approval patterns. Design decisions: when to show gas savings from transient storage vs traditional storage, whether to surface this as a 'gas optimized' badge on protocols using it, no direct UI needed but affects gas estimation accuracy.

Category: DeFi Patterns

Payable Token

Tokens can trigger contract actions on receipt — transfer+action in one transaction instead of approve+transferFrom pattern. Design implications: show single-step payment flows ('Pay 100 USDC' vs 'Approve then Pay'), indicate when tokens support payable callbacks, simplify subscription/purchase UIs. Design decisions: less widely adopted than permit — decide whether to feature-detect and adapt UI, balance simplicity gains against explaining why some tokens have different flows. Directly addresses the Redundant Token Approvals pain point (High severity) — ERC-20's separate approve+call is where most first-time DeFi users abandon. ERC-1363 eliminates that two-step flow at the token standard level.

Category: Transaction Friction

Fee Market Change

Gas fees have a predictable base fee plus optional priority tip — wallets can auto-estimate reliably. Design implications: show base fee (burns) separately from priority fee (to validator), display 'max fee' cap for user peace of mind, auto-suggest priority fees based on urgency ('Slow/Normal/Fast'), show real-time base fee trends. Design decisions: whether to expose full fee breakdown (transparency) or single 'estimated fee' (simplicity); how to handle fee spikes without alarming users. Live and universal. Gas & Fees Checklist rates fee breakdown display as Medium priority for 'transparency when fees spike.' Mainnet at ~3 gwei but the UX problem persists: users can't predict costs before committing.

Category: Infrastructure

Account Abstraction Using Alt Mempool

Users interact with smart accounts instead of EOAs. No seed phrases required, social recovery possible, gas payable in any token. Design implications: design onboarding without 'write down 12 words', show gas payment token selector, build recovery flows (guardian management UI), display bundled operations as single actions. Design decisions: tradeoff between custodial simplicity and self-custody complexity, must handle paymaster failures gracefully, decide whether to abstract UserOperations completely or expose for power users. 54M+ smart accounts, 1B+ UserOps. Smart wallets retain 70% of users vs 60% for seed-phrase wallets . Primary solution to Gas Hurdle (Critical), Key Management Burden (High), and Forced Backup Friction (Medium). Widely deployed (Safe, Biconomy, ZeroDev).

Category: Transaction Friction

Shard Blob Transactions

L2 rollups can post data cheaply via blobs — dramatically lower L2 fees but blob data is temporary. Design implications: on L2 UIs, show 'Secured by Ethereum blobs' badge, indicate blob fee separately from execution gas on L2 fee breakdowns, for data-heavy L2 txs show potential savings vs. calldata. Design decisions: whether to expose blob mechanics to users (educational) or abstract as 'L2 data fee' (simple); how to communicate temporary blob availability for archival use cases. Live on all major L2s. Slashed L2 fees 10-100x. Unpredictable Gas Fees (Medium) remains a prediction and transparency UX gap despite dramatically lower costs.

Category: Infrastructure

Paymaster Gas Sponsorship

Defines the standard interface for paymasters that let dApps cover gas fees — users experience 'no gas needed' onboarding. Design implications: detect empty wallets and offer gas sponsorship automatically, show clear indication when a transaction is sponsored vs user-paid, design paymaster selection if multiple are available, handle paymaster failures gracefully with fallback to user-paid. Design decisions: whether to show the sponsorship source (dApp, protocol), how to communicate the gas sponsorship model to users, fallback UX when paymaster rejects a transaction. Critical priority for gas UX — 'Detect empty wallets, offer gas sponsorship — new users transact immediately.' Modern replacement for ERC-2771 meta-transaction patterns.

Category: Transaction Friction

Native Account Abstraction (Frame Txs)

Native protocol-level account abstraction — every Ethereum account becomes a smart account by default, no opt-in required. Design implications: design for a world where all accounts have smart wallet capabilities, remove EOA vs smart account distinction from UX, build universal recovery and key rotation flows. Design decisions: long-term architectural consideration — plan for native AA while building on ERC-4337/EIP-7702 today, consider migration paths for existing EOA users. Active draft. Long-term fix for the EOA vs smart account split — 'Native AA lets every user benefit without opting in.' High severity in Protocol Design section.

Category: Transaction Friction

Linear memory pricing replaces Ethereum's quadratic model — gas costs scale predictably with operation size. Design implications: show tighter estimate ranges with higher confidence, use Monad-specific gas estimation (not Ethereum defaults), enable batch and data-heavy flows without surprise fee jumps. Design decisions: whether to explain linear scaling to users or just show accurate estimates; how to present confidence levels on fee previews.

Category: Infrastructure

Pre-check if a transaction would fail before sending — apps can query spendable balance accounting for the 10 MON reserve. Design implications: show spendable vs total balance, disable send when amount exceeds spendable, pre-validate before wallet popup, explain reserve with clear tooltips. Design decisions: whether MAX subtracts reserve + gas automatically; how to surface pre-check failures without blocking power users.

Category: Transaction Friction

EIP-7702 account abstraction supported with reserve balance constraints — delegated EOAs can't drain below 10 MON. Design implications: show clear warnings when delegating EOA ('10 MON minimum balance required while delegated'), indicate delegation status in account views, warn if attempting to send all funds from delegated account. Design decisions: whether delegation UI should enforce 10 MON check upfront or allow and show clear revert reasons; how to explain the CREATE/CREATE2 restriction for advanced users.

Category: Transaction Friction

Every EOA must maintain a 10 MON reserve for async execution safety. Two-layer enforcement: consensus-time (inflight tx budget) and execution-time (revert if ending balance < reserve). Undelegated accounts get one emptying transaction per ~3 blocks that bypasses the reserve; delegated accounts (EIP-7702) cannot. Design implications: show spendable vs total balance, account for reserve in MAX buttons, detect delegation status for emptying tx eligibility, handle transactions that revert after block inclusion, warn when approaching reserve threshold. Design decisions: whether to surface emptying transaction option for sub-10-MON balances vs. simply prompting to add funds.

Category: Transaction Friction

Cold storage access costs ~4x more gas than Ethereum to reflect Monad's optimized compute vs. storage ratio. Design implications: gas estimates may differ from Ethereum for storage-heavy operations, show Monad-specific gas estimates (not Ethereum defaults), first-touch storage operations cost more. Design decisions: whether to surface repricing details in advanced gas settings or just show accurate Monad estimates; ensure gas estimation tools use Monad-specific pricing.

Category: Infrastructure