What Are Gas Station Networks (GSN)?

The Gas Station Network (GSN) is a decentralized network of relayers mainly referring to the Ethereum blockchain. It allows you to build decentralized applications (dApps) which provide payment for transactions, so users do not need to hold Ether or ETH to pay for gas, easing their onboarding process and improving user acquisition and experience.

However, while the relayers in the GSN do not charge users, they charge the recipient and contract instead. In this way, the relayers recover the costs of transactions and profit from extra fees for providing such services.

Originally conceived and designed by TabooKey, the GSN has grown to encompass many companies, protocols and platforms in the Ethereum ecosystem that wish to facilitate the onboarding of users to Ethereum applications. 

While it may sound like a costly investment since Ethereum is notorious for slower transaction speeds and high fees when the network is congested, GSNs continue to thrive as their charges are still relatively much more affordable than the capital required for traditional marketing, user acquisition, and onboarding new users,  

GSNs have also continued to evolve and improve with time, providing greater convenience, with some allowing users to pay the platform or recipient off-chain in advance through traditional methods such as credit card, with each GSN usage deducting from their balance on the recipient platform’s system. 

With regards to reliability and security issues, GSNs are set up in such a way that it is in the relayers' best interest to process requests of the platforms they serve properly, as there are measures in place to penalize them for malpractice. All of this is automated through smart contracts, greatly improving reliability and user experience (UX).  
Author: Marco De Rossi, President & Cofounder

Marco De Rossi is the President and Co-founder at HAL, who envisions a future tech landscape where companies or developers can choose to integrate decentralized technologies depending on whether or not they need to be trustless. Marco is an experienced speaker with a background in Economics and Arts. He holds a wealth of experience in the tech space as a programmer, a digital marketing consultant and as a journalist. He is also the founder of WeSchool, a leading EdTech company with 2M+ users.

HAL is a Web3 data infrastructure tool, allowing developers, protocols and companies to track, monitor and trigger data via simple APIs and push notifications. Its mission is to democratize and simplify access to blockchain infrastructure, bridging decentralized and centralized technologies.