RSK’s Gas Station Network first version deployed to Testnet

We are pleased to announce that we’ve deployed the first version of RSK’s Gas Station Network (GSN for short) to Testnet. This solution enables Dapp creators to pay for gas instead of forcing their users to do so. In doing this, user onboarding is greatly leveraged due to some technical barriers being removed. Namely, users won’t need to install a wallet nor acquire crypto prior to using a Dapp.

This gasless meta-transaction system is an adaptation of Tabookey‘s solution for the Ethereum network – we’ve made it compatible with RSK. One of the most important highlights about GSN is that it is a trustless and decentralized system – essentially a network of independent transaction relayers that get rewarded for relaying third party gasless transactions to the network.

The importance of having such a system can be summarized with a quote from Tabookey’s original unveiling article:

“Dapps gain value through network effect. The first users get little value, but value increases as more users join. However, users need to jump through hoops — go to an exchange, pass a KYC process and wait for approval, transfer money from their bank, buy ETH, install MetaMask, learn how to use it and transfer ETH to it, etc. All that, just to start using a dapp that offers little value at that point.”

We encourage the community to test the system (either by making their Dapps compatible or by running their own relayer – or both!) and then submit their feedback here so that we can take it into consideration in view of our upcoming Mainnet deployment! Please refer to this repository (the release can be found here) for technical information, documentation, source code and getting started instructions. Last but not least, the deployed GSN’s RelayHub contract can be found here.