Gas abstraction
Pay a transaction's fee out of a stablecoin you already hold, instead of needing the chain's native gas token on hand.
Every action in Botanary that changes state on-chain is built as an ERC-4337 operation and submitted through a bundler rather than sent as a raw transaction. That's what makes gas abstraction possible: the fee for an operation doesn't have to be paid in the chain's native token at all - it can come out of a stablecoin balance you already hold.
Payment methods
There are four ways an operation's gas can be paid for:
| Method | What it means |
|---|---|
| Sponsored | Botanary covers the fee. Used for specific flows like a testnet account's first deployment - not something you choose for an everyday send or swap. |
| USDC | The fee is paid from your USDC balance via a signed permit, without a separate on-chain approval step. |
| USDT | The fee is paid from your USDT balance via a plain on-chain approval, batched into the same operation you're already signing. |
| Native | The fee is paid the ordinary way, out of the chain's own native asset - labeled with whatever that chain actually calls it (ETH, POL, BNB, and so on), never hardcoded to one name. |
Of these, only USDC, USDT, and Native are ones you actually choose between - sponsorship is computed internally for the cases where it applies and isn't offered as a selectable option.
What's actually available to you
Which methods you can pick from depends on your account and the chain you're on: USDC gas only works on a chain where the underlying paymaster is deployed, and USDT gas only works where a live, chain-aware check confirms it's actually usable there - never assumed from configuration alone. A chain with neither wired up simply offers native payment, and that's reported honestly rather than silently offering something that isn't really available. Where it's offered, USDC is the default method, because it's the one that lets an account with zero native gas transact at all.
Not needing the chain's native token on hand is the point - and it holds wherever USDC gas is available. It isn't guaranteed on every chain for every method; check what's actually offered for your account and chain before assuming a specific method works.
One signature, not two, for USDT
USDT gas needs a plain on-chain approval rather than a signed permit, but that approval is folded into the very operation it's paying for - you still only sign once. USDC gas, by contrast, needs a second signature of its own; see Send for how that plays out for a transfer.
Previewed like everything else
The party sponsoring or fronting a fee also simulates the operation - including your account's own policy hook - before agreeing to cover it. A refusal there comes back as the same kind of decline you'd see anywhere else in Botanary, not a raw failure. See Simulation for how previewing works across every action.
Fee amounts shown before you confirm are illustrative, not a live quote for the exact operation you're about to sign - treat them as a rough sense of cost, not an exact figure.