Yes, you can trade perps with zero ETH in your wallet. This is not a theoretical claim about account abstraction. It is what happens on uponly.win every day. The smart wallet pays for gas using a paymaster that accepts USDC, sponsored on Base via Pimlico. You hold USDC only. You never need to fund the wallet with ETH at any step.
This explainer walks through how it actually works under the hood, why it is sustainable, and what trade-offs come with it. If you have ever been blocked from a trade because you forgot to top up ETH, this is the structural fix.
why eth gas is the standard problem
On any EVM chain, the native token pays for gas. That means on Ethereum you need ETH, on Base you need ETH on Base, on Arbitrum you need ETH on Arbitrum. Even if your trading collateral is USDC, you still need a small ETH balance per chain to pay for the actual transactions.
For perp traders, that creates a constant friction:
- You buy USDC on a CEX, then have to buy a small amount of ETH separately.
- You bridge USDC to the right chain, then have to bridge or buy ETH on the same chain.
- You forget to top up ETH, and the wallet refuses to send the trade.
- You hold dust ETH that you can never quite clean up.
- You pay gas on every approval, every deposit, every open, every close, every withdrawal.
It is the single most quoted reason new users bounce off a perp dex on their first try.
what a paymaster actually is
A paymaster is a contract on-chain that agrees to pay the gas for someone else under a specified policy. The user signs a transaction-like structure called a user-operation. The paymaster signs it too, accepting responsibility for the gas. A bundler submits the bundle to the chain. The chain charges the paymaster, not the user.
The user does not need to hold native ETH because the paymaster does. The paymaster can be reimbursed in any token it wants to accept, in our case USDC, and that reimbursement is settled inside the user-operation itself.
how uponly.win uses pimlico on base
uponly.win uses Pimlico as the bundler-plus-paymaster provider on Base. The chain of events for a single trade looks like this:
- The user taps RIP. The app builds a user-operation that calls into the Avantis perp contract.
- The smart wallet, provisioned by Privy, signs the user-operation.
- Pimlico paymaster co-signs, agreeing to sponsor the gas, settled in USDC from the user.
- Pimlico bundler submits the bundle on Base. The chain executes it.
- The trade opens. The user sees a position. No ETH was ever needed.
From the user side, this is invisible. There is no extra step. There is no gas prompt. The first tap creates the position.
what changes for the trader in practice
- No ETH on any chain, ever, for trading on uponly.win.
- No approve-then-deposit two-step. The smart wallet handles batched operations in a single user-op.
- No forgotten gas top-up. You cannot run out of ETH because you never had it.
- No bridging ETH to a new chain just to take a trade. USDC is the only thing you bridge.
- No dust ETH left over after closing positions.
For a comparison with traditional onboarding, see our walkthrough on trading perps without a funded ETH wallet.
is gasless really gasless or is it just hidden
Honest answer: someone always pays gas. Gas is the on-chain cost of execution, and that cost is real. What "gasless" means in this context is that the user does not pay gas in ETH and does not pay it as a separate transaction.
On uponly.win, the gas cost is borne by the paymaster and reimbursed in USDC. For small trade sizes, the cost is genuinely tiny because Base has low fees. For the user, it shows up as a slight, predictable cost embedded in the trade, not as a barrier to entry.
There is no platform fee to open a trade. There is no platform fee on a losing close. The paymaster cost is a separate mechanic from those two, and it is small enough on Base that it does not change the rip economics in any meaningful way.
what could go wrong with paymaster-sponsored gas
A few edge cases worth understanding.
- If the paymaster service is degraded, a user-operation could fail to submit. uponly.win monitors this and falls back to alternate paths where possible.
- If the user has zero USDC, there is nothing for the paymaster to be reimbursed from. You need at least the cost of the trade plus a margin.
- If Base gas spikes during high congestion, the per-trade gas cost rises. That cost still gets reimbursed in USDC, but the math gets less attractive.
- If the smart wallet has been compromised, the paymaster cannot save you. Account abstraction does not change the underlying security model of the keys.
These are real risks. They are also small relative to the constant friction of running an ETH gas balance on three chains.
why this matters more on mobile
On desktop, holding a side balance of ETH for gas is annoying. On mobile, it is fatal. The wallet app demanding gas, the user bouncing out to fund ETH, the bridge in a separate browser tab. The whole flow falls apart.
A paymaster on mobile is the difference between a trade happening and a user bouncing. That is the entire reason uponly.win prioritizes the paymaster stack on Base. For the mobile angle specifically, see our mobile perp trading guide.
try perp trading with zero eth right now
The fastest way to feel a real no-ETH perp flow is to open uponly.win, sign in with email, deposit USDC on Base, and tap RIP. There is no ETH in your wallet at any point. The trade just happens.
Perps are high-risk entertainment. Removing the ETH gas tax does not reduce the market risk of the position itself. Use collateral you can afford to lose entirely.