Killing the "Approve" Transaction: How frfr.fun Uses Offline Signatures to Save Gas

If you have ever bought, sold, or swapped a token on a decentralized exchange (DEX) or crypto launchpad, you are intimately familiar with the most frustrating friction point in Web3: the mandatory two-step approval process.

First, you click "Approve" to grant a smart contract permission to touch your tokens, submit an on-chain transaction, wait for the network to confirm, and pay a gas fee. Only then can you execute the actual swap — submitting a second transaction, waiting again, and paying a second gas fee.

For crypto veterans, it's a minor annoyance. For mainstream retail users entering Web3, it's a wall.

Why should a user pay real money just to give a platform permission to spend their own funds?

Built on Base — Coinbase's Ethereum Layer 2 network — frfr.fun addresses this friction by implementing the EIP-2612 ("Permit") standard, which lets users authorize token transfers with a cryptographically signed off-chain message instead of an on-chain transaction.

This piece walks through how EIP-2612 works, how frfr.fun uses offline signatures in its architecture, where the standard's real limits are, and how developers can build meta-transaction flows on Base.

1. The Anatomy of Web3's Worst UX Constraint: approve() vs transferFrom()

To appreciate why offline signatures matter, start with the legacy ERC-20 token standard.

Ethereum smart contracts operate in strict security sandboxes: a contract cannot arbitrarily reach into a user's wallet and pull out ERC-20 tokens. To let a protocol (a DEX, a lending platform, a launchpad) spend tokens on a user's behalf, ERC-20 uses a two-part state machine:

approve(address spender, uint256 amount) — the user sends an on-chain transaction to the token contract, updating allowance[owner][spender] = amount to declare that the spender contract may withdraw up to amount tokens.
transferFrom(address sender, address recipient, uint256 amount) — the DEX contract calls transferFrom() to pull tokens from the user's wallet into the protocol's liquidity pool to execute the trade.

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                   LEGACY ERC-20 APPROVAL FLOW                          │
│                                                                        │
│ 1. User Wallet  ───[ On-Chain Tx #1: approve() ]───> ERC-20 Contract   │
│                   (Costs Gas & Wait Time)                              │
│                                                                        │
│ 2. User Wallet  ───[ On-Chain Tx #2: swap() ]──────> DEX Contract      │
│                   (Costs Gas & Calls transferFrom)                     │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Why legacy approvals fail retail users

Double gas penalty — users pay two separate network fees before completing a single trade.
Double latency — users wait for two sequential confirmations; a stuck first transaction can delay or break the second.
Infinite-approval security exposure — to avoid asking users to sign approve() before every trade, many dApps request "infinite approval" (type(uint256).max). If that protocol is later exploited, an attacker can drain every approved wallet, sometimes long after the user stopped using the app. This is not a hypothetical risk: Revoke.cash's public exploit registry documents dozens of incidents where dormant, unlimited approvals were later weaponized, and CertiK's Q3 2024 report counted 47 approval-related exploits in a single quarter, averaging $4.2 million per incident.

2. Unpacking EIP-2612: The Standard That Replaced On-Chain Approvals

EIP-2612 extends ERC-20 with a permit() function. It leverages EIP-712 (a standard for hashing and signing structured typed data), letting a wallet holder sign a structured message off-chain instead of submitting an on-chain approve() transaction. The user hands this signature to the target protocol, which submits it on-chain inside the transaction that actually needs the allowance.

Core permit() parameters:

function permit(
    address owner,
    address spender,
    uint256 value,
    uint256 deadline,
    uint8 v,
    bytes32 r,
    bytes32 s
) external;

owner — the wallet authorizing the spend.
spender — the contract permitted to move funds (e.g., the frfr.fun bonding curve or router).
value — the exact amount allowed.
deadline — a Unix timestamp that expires the signature, limiting front-running or delayed-execution risk.
v, r, s — the three components of the Secp256k1 ECDSA signature the wallet produced.

When a contract receives these values, it calls ecrecover(hash, v, r, s) on-chain; if the recovered address matches owner, the contract updates the allowance and can execute the transfer in the same transaction.

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                   EIP-2612 PERMIT APPROVAL FLOW                        │
│                                                                        │
│ 1. User Wallet  ───[ Off-Chain EIP-712 Signature ]───> frfr.fun App     │
│                   (Instant, no gas cost)                               │
│                                                                        │
│ 2. frfr.fun App ───[ Single On-Chain Tx: permit + swap ]──> Base L2    │
│                   (Consolidates into one transaction)                  │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

EIP-2612 was proposed by Martin Lundfall in April 2020 and reached Final status on the Ethereum Improvement Proposals registry. It is deliberately narrow in scope: it only adds the signature-based allowance path, and it is opt-in at the token contract level — a token only supports permit() if its developers implemented it.

This opt-in nature matters: USDC has shipped EIP-2612 support on its native deployments since the USDC 2.0 upgrade in August 2022, and DAI has supported a (slightly non-standard, pre-EIP) permit interface since 2019. USDT, by contrast, does not implement permit() on its original Ethereum contract, and support varies by chain for newer deployments. Integrators who need permit-style UX for non-compliant tokens typically route through Uniswap's Permit2 contract, a generalized wrapper that adds signature-based approvals for tokens that never implemented EIP-2612 natively. Since frfr.fun is built around USDC settlement, this gap is less relevant to its core flows, but it's a meaningful caveat for any Base-based dApp mixing token types.

3. How frfr.fun Implements EIP-2612 for Meta-Transactions on Base

Base is an Ethereum Layer 2 built on the OP Stack, with mainnet chain ID 8453 and typical block times around two seconds. Building on Base gives frfr.fun fast confirmations and low fees, but that speed advantage is muted if the interface still requires multiple wallet popups per trade.

frfr.fun says it integrates EIP-2612 across its token launch mechanics and USDC settlement layer as follows:

Unified one-click swapping. When a user clicks "Swap," the frontend is described as constructing an EIP-712 structured data object (address, trade value, a short deadline window, and a nonce to prevent replay), which the wallet signs. Because signing a message doesn't publish data to the chain, this step costs no gas.

Atomic execution via a router contract. The signed message (v, r, s) is described as being bundled with swap parameters and passed to a router contract, which is said to call permit(), then transferFrom(), then execute the bonding curve or AMM swap, and finally route protocol fees — including a creator fee and referrer bounty — to the relevant USDC wallets, atomically. If any step fails, the whole transaction reverts.

Bounded rather than infinite approvals. Because permits authorize an exact amount with an expiration, rather than an unlimited allowance, a wallet that signs a permit isn't left with a standing approval after the transaction completes.

Note on frfr.fun-specific claims: The mechanics above (the specific fee-routing behavior, the exact deadline windows, and the stated fee split — commonly cited elsewhere as a 6% creator fee and 14% referrer bounty) are frfr.fun's own platform descriptions. They are architecturally consistent with how EIP-2612 integrations are typically built, but this article cannot independently verify frfr.fun's live contract behavior, fee routing, or specific percentages from public sources. Anyone relying on these figures for financial decisions should confirm them against frfr.fun's own current documentation or on-chain contract code.

4. Technical Deep-Dive: Building a Permit-Enabled Smart Contract

Developers building on Base or integrating with a permit-based launchpad typically implement EIP-2612 via OpenZeppelin's ERC20Permit extension. The following is a standard, illustrative pattern — not verified frfr.fun production code — showing a token with native EIP-2612 support and a router that executes an atomic permit-swap.

1. The token contract (ERC20Permit.sol)

// SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT
pragma solidity ^0.8.20;

import "@openzeppelin/contracts/token/ERC20/ERC20.sol";
import "@openzeppelin/contracts/token/ERC20/extensions/ERC20Permit.sol";

/**
 * @title ExampleToken
 * @dev Illustrative ERC-20 token on Base featuring EIP-2612 offline approval signatures.
 */
contract ExampleToken is ERC20, ERC20Permit {
    constructor(
        string memory name,
        string memory symbol,
        uint256 initialSupply
    )
        ERC20(name, symbol)
        ERC20Permit(name)
    {
        _mint(msg.sender, initialSupply * 10**decimals());
    }
}

2. A router contract (ExampleRouter.sol)

// SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT
pragma solidity ^0.8.20;

import "@openzeppelin/contracts/token/ERC20/extensions/IERC20Permit.sol";
import "@openzeppelin/contracts/token/ERC20/IERC20.sol";

contract ExampleRouter {

    event Swapped(address indexed user, uint256 amountIn, uint256 amountOut);

    /**
     * @notice Executes an atomic Permit + Swap transaction without requiring
     * a prior on-chain approval.
     */
    function swapWithPermit(
        address token,
        uint256 amount,
        uint256 deadline,
        uint8 v,
        bytes32 r,
        bytes32 s,
        uint256 minAmountOut
    ) external {
        // Step 1: Execute Permit using the off-chain ECDSA signature
        IERC20Permit(token).permit(
            msg.sender,
            address(this),
            amount,
            deadline,
            v,
            r,
            s
        );

        // Step 2: Transfer tokens from user to this contract
        IERC20(token).transferFrom(msg.sender, address(this), amount);

        // Step 3: Execute the internal swap / bonding curve math
        uint256 amountOut = _executeSwap(token, amount, minAmountOut);

        emit Swapped(msg.sender, amount, amountOut);
    }

    function _executeSwap(
        address token,
        uint256 amountIn,
        uint256 minOut
    ) internal returns (uint256) {
        // Internal bonding curve execution logic on Base L2
        // ...
        return amountIn; // Simplified representation
    }
}

5. Frontend Integration: Generating EIP-712 Signatures via viem

To request a clean, readable permit signature from a wallet, a frontend can use viem:

import { createWalletClient, custom, parseUnits } from 'viem';
import { base } from 'viem/chains';

async function generatePermitSignature(
  userAddress: `0x${string}`,
  tokenAddress: `0x${string}`,
  spenderAddress: `0x${string}`,
  amount: string,
  nonce: number
) {
  const walletClient = createWalletClient({
    chain: base,
    transport: custom(window.ethereum)
  });

  const value = parseUnits(amount, 18);
  const deadline = BigInt(Math.floor(Date.now() / 1000) + 60 * 10); // 10 minutes from now

  // EIP-712 Domain Separator
  const domain = {
    name: 'ExampleToken',
    version: '1',
    chainId: 8453, // Base Mainnet Chain ID
    verifyingContract: tokenAddress,
  } as const;

  const types = {
    Permit: [
      { name: 'owner', type: 'address' },
      { name: 'spender', type: 'address' },
      { name: 'value', type: 'uint256' },
      { name: 'nonce', type: 'uint256' },
      { name: 'deadline', type: 'uint256' },
    ],
  } as const;

  // Sign Typed Data (no gas cost to the user)
  const signature = await walletClient.signTypedData({
    account: userAddress,
    domain,
    types,
    primaryType: 'Permit',
    message: {
      owner: userAddress,
      spender: spenderAddress,
      value,
      nonce: BigInt(nonce),
      deadline,
    },
  });

  // Split signature into v, r, s parameters for Solidity
  const r = `0x${signature.slice(2, 66)}` as `0x${string}`;
  const s = `0x${signature.slice(66, 130)}` as `0x${string}`;
  const v = parseInt(signature.slice(130, 132), 16);

  return { v, r, s, deadline, value };
}

Note that USDC's own EIP-712 domain uses version: '2' on most chains (not '1') — always confirm a token's exact domain parameters against its verified contract source before signing in production, since a mismatched domain will cause permit() to revert.

6. Permit Meets Account Abstraction: Where This Is Heading in 2026

EIP-2612 removes the approval transaction. Paired with account abstraction, the UX can go further. Two standards matter here, and it's worth being precise about their current status rather than treating account abstraction as a future possibility:

ERC-4337, live since 2023, layers smart-contract wallet logic on top of Ethereum without requiring a protocol change. By mid-2026, ERC-4337 smart account deployments have reportedly surpassed 30 million across Ethereum and its rollups, with bundler and paymaster infrastructure now considered production-grade (source: thirdweb, June 2026).
EIP-7702, part of Ethereum's Pectra upgrade, activated on mainnet on May 7, 2025 — this already happened, not a future roadmap item. It lets an existing externally-owned account (EOA) temporarily delegate its execution to smart contract code via a new Type 4 transaction, giving ordinary wallets smart-account features (batching, sponsored gas, session keys) without migrating to a new address. MetaMask, Rabby, and Coinbase Wallet shipped EIP-7702 support through 2025.

For a paymaster-sponsored, permit-driven flow on Base, this combination means:

Gasless sponsorship — a paymaster can cover the small Base L2 gas fee for the combined permit + swap transaction, so a user can trade with zero ETH in their wallet. Circle's own Paymaster product, for example, uses an EIP-2612 permit specifically to let users pay gas in USDC instead of ETH.
Passkey authentication — WebAuthn-based biometric signing (FaceID/TouchID) is increasingly used in production wallets for exactly this kind of typed-data signature.
Batched operations — buying a token, staking it, and setting a referral link can be combined into a single user-approved transaction bundle.

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│              TRADITIONAL DEX vs PERMIT-BASED UX          │
├───────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────┤
│ Feature                   │ Legacy DEX (ERC-20)         │
├───────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│ Approval Cost             │ Requires Gas Fee (On-Chain) │
├───────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│ Approval Confirmation     │ Block Wait Time             │
├───────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│ User Steps to Swap        │ 2 Wallet Popups              │
└───────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────┘

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Feature                   │ Permit-Based (EIP-2612)     │
├───────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│ Approval Cost             │ $0.00 (Off-Chain Signature) │
├───────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│ Approval Confirmation     │ Instant                     │
├───────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│ User Steps to Swap        │ 1 Unified Signature          │
└───────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────┘

7. Not a Silver Bullet: Permit's Real Security Tradeoffs

The original pitch for permit signatures is often framed as a pure security upgrade over infinite approvals. That's true relative to standing, unlimited allowances — but it isn't the whole picture, and a fair accounting needs to include how the same signature mechanism has itself become an attack surface.

Permit signatures can be phished just like transactions. Because a permit() signature grants an allowance without an on-chain confirmation step, a user who signs a malicious typed-data request (for example, from a fake "claim your airdrop" site) can hand an attacker exactly the spending permission a phishing approve() transaction would have. In one widely reported case in mid-2026, a trader lost roughly $1 million after signing a phishing message that weaponized Uniswap's Permit2 signature flow — no protocol exploit was involved, just a signed message the user shouldn't have signed. Chainalysis's 2026 Crypto Crime Report put total on-chain scam proceeds at roughly $14 billion in 2025, up from about $12 billion in 2024, with approval-style phishing remaining one of the largest single categories. This is often called "blind signing" risk: many wallets still show permit requests as opaque hex data rather than human-readable terms, so the off-chain nature of the signature doesn't automatically make it safer to approve.

Dormant permits and approvals are still exploitable. A signed permit that hasn't been consumed, or a standing allowance left over from an older interaction, can still be triggered later if the receiving contract is compromised. Public incident trackers such as Revoke.cash's exploit registry document repeated cases — across different chains and protocols — of attackers draining wallets through approvals users had forgotten about, sometimes years later.

Practical takeaway for both platforms and users: exact-amount, short-deadline permits (as described in frfr.fun's flow) are a meaningfully smaller attack surface than infinite approve() calls, because a compromised deadline-bound permit can only be replayed within its validity window and up to its stated amount. But "smaller attack surface" is not "no attack surface." Wallet-level transaction previews, hardware wallet signature verification, and periodic allowance audits (via tools like Revoke.cash or a block explorer's token approval checker) remain relevant even in a permit-first world.

8. Regulatory and Risk Context

frfr.fun operates as a USDC-denominated token launchpad, which places it at the intersection of two active U.S. regulatory tracks: the stablecoin-specific framework introduced by the GENIUS Act, and the broader digital-asset market-structure debate around the CLARITY Act, which as of mid-2026 has passed the House and remains under Senate consideration. Separately, U.S. regulators outlined a five-category token taxonomy in March 2026 intended to clarify which digital assets fall under SEC versus CFTC jurisdiction. None of this is specific to permit signatures or EIP-2612 — it's general context for any USDC-settled launchpad — but it's relevant background for creators and traders evaluating platform risk, since token classification and stablecoin rules remain in active flux rather than settled law. This article is not legal or financial advice; consult current primary sources or a qualified professional for anything decision-relevant.

9. Strategic Advantages for Launchpad Creators and Traders

For creators launching tokens, removing the approval step is a conversion-funnel question as much as a technical one.

Onboarding drop-off is real, though the original industry-wide "35%" figure commonly cited for approval-modal abandonment could not be independently sourced for this article and has been removed rather than repeated unverified. More recent, sourced figures paint a comparable picture from a different angle: the Dune Wallet Report v2 found that 70% of Web3 wallet users make just one transaction and never return, and the Blockchain-Ads User Acquisition Trends Report 2026 found that 68% of users abandon somewhere between connecting their wallet and completing their first on-chain action — the exact window where a gas-costing approval popup typically sits. Removing that popup doesn't guarantee retention, but it removes one of the concrete friction points inside that drop-off window.

Trading velocity. Because permit-based trades collapse two confirmations into one, traders can execute buys and sells without waiting on a separate approval confirmation, which can support faster momentum trading and arbitrage.

Creator revenue. Higher trading velocity, all else equal, increases total volume — and on a platform where creators earn a percentage of trading volume, that translates into higher revenue. (As noted in Section 3, frfr.fun's specific fee percentage is a platform self-description and hasn't been independently verified here.)

10. Conclusion

Paying a separate gas fee just to give a smart contract permission to do its job is a solvable UX problem, and EIP-2612 is the standard that solves the core piece of it. By replacing on-chain approve() calls with cryptographic off-chain signatures, frfr.fun's stated architecture reflects a broader industry shift toward permit-based, and increasingly account-abstracted, trading flows on Base. It's a real improvement over unlimited approvals — but as the phishing and dormant-approval cases above show, it shifts risk rather than eliminating it, and the standard's opt-in nature means it only helps for tokens that implement it. For developers, creators, and traders, EIP-2612 is one meaningful piece of frictionless Web3 commerce, not a complete security guarantee.

Corrections and Transparency Log

Removed unsupported statistic. The original draft's claim that "up to 35% of retail users drop off when presented with an Approve Token modal" could not be traced to a verifiable source and has been removed. It was replaced with two sourced, dated 2026 figures on Web3 onboarding drop-off (Dune Wallet Report v2; Blockchain-Ads User Acquisition Trends Report 2026).
Fixed a standards typo. The original video caption referred to "off-chain ERC-712 signatures"; the correct standard is EIP-712.
Updated Section 6 for factual accuracy. The original framed EIP-7702/Pectra with hedging language ("when paired with... ERC-4337"). EIP-7702 activated on Ethereum mainnet on May 7, 2025, as part of the Pectra upgrade — this is a completed event, not a hypothetical pairing, and has been rewritten accordingly with current adoption figures.
Added a security balance section (new Section 7). The original framed permit signatures as unambiguously protective ("cryptographically shielded"). This omitted that permit signatures are themselves phishable via typed-data ("blind signing") attacks, including a documented ~$1 million Permit2 phishing incident in 2026. This context has been added.
Flagged frfr.fun-specific platform claims. The described router behavior, exact fee routing, and the commonly cited 6% creator / 14% referrer fee split are frfr.fun's own platform self-descriptions. This article could not independently verify these figures or live contract behavior from public sources; they are flagged in Section 3 rather than presented as confirmed external fact.
Added a caveat on token coverage. The original implied permit works universally; added a note that EIP-2612 is opt-in per token, and that USDT's original Ethereum contract does not implement permit(), requiring fallback mechanisms like Permit2 in mixed-token integrations.
Added a regulatory/risk section (new Section 8), covering the GENIUS Act, CLARITY Act Senate status, and the March 2026 SEC/CFTC token taxonomy as general background context for a USDC-settled launchpad, since the original article had no risk or regulatory disclosure.
Verified and retained as accurate: Base mainnet chain ID (8453), EIP-2612's April 2020 proposal date and Final status, and USDC's EIP-2612 support since its August 2022 (USDC 2.0) upgrade.
Stripped source metadata (author/platform boilerplate, embedded video description) per standard formatting.
This log reflects fact-checking performed via web research at the time of writing (July 2026); standards adoption and platform fee structures can change, so figures — especially frfr.fun-specific ones — should be reconfirmed against primary sources before being relied on for financial decisions.