Killing the "Approve" Transaction: How Offline Signatures Save Gas on Base

If you've ever bought, sold, or swapped a token on a decentralized exchange or launchpad, you know the most frustrating friction point in Web3: the two-step approval process.

First, you click "Approve" to grant a smart contract permission to touch your tokens, submit an on-chain transaction, and pay a gas fee. Only then can you execute the actual trade — a second transaction, a second wait, a second fee.

For crypto veterans, it's a minor annoyance. For someone's first fifteen minutes in Web3, it's a wall.

The fix has existed since 2020: EIP-2612, better known as "permit," which lets a wallet authorize a token transfer with a free, off-chain signature instead of a paid on-chain transaction. This piece breaks down how permit actually works, what it can and can't do for a USDC-denominated launchpad like frfr.fun, and — because this is the part most explainers skip — why permit-style signatures have also become one of the largest attack surfaces in DeFi.

1. The Problem: approve() and transferFrom()

Ethereum's ERC-20 standard was built with a strict rule: a smart contract can't reach into your wallet and pull tokens out on its own. To let a protocol (a DEX, a lending market, a launchpad) spend on your behalf, ERC-20 uses a two-part state machine:

approve(address spender, uint256 amount) — an on-chain transaction that sets allowance[owner][spender] = amount.
transferFrom(address sender, address recipient, uint256 amount) — the spender contract later pulls up to that allowance.

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                   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)                     │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

This causes three real problems:

Double gas cost. Two network fees for one trade.
Double latency. Two sequential confirmations; if the first is slow or underpriced, the second can stall or fail.
Infinite-approval risk. To avoid asking for a fresh approval on every trade, many dApps request unlimited allowances (type(uint256).max). If that contract is later exploited, an attacker can drain every wallet that ever approved it — even users who stopped using the app months earlier. Chainalysis estimated in 2026 that more than $2.4 billion in standing unlimited approvals still sit on wallets, waiting to be exploited.

2. EIP-2612: Signed Approvals Instead of On-Chain Ones

EIP-2612 ("Permit Extension for EIP-20 Signed Approvals") was proposed by Martin Lundfall in April 2020 and adds three functions to a compliant ERC-20 token: permit(), nonces(), and DOMAIN_SEPARATOR(). It builds on EIP-712, the standard for signing structured, human-readable typed data, so wallets can show the user exactly what they're authorizing rather than an opaque hex blob.

Instead of an on-chain approve() call, the token holder signs a structured message off-chain with their private key. That signature functions as a temporary, single-use voucher. The relying protocol submits the signature on-chain — typically inside the same transaction as the actual trade — and the token contract verifies it with ecrecover() before updating the allowance and executing the transfer, all in one block.

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 the funds
value — the exact amount authorized (not automatically infinite)
deadline — a Unix timestamp after which the signature is void
v, r, s — the ECDSA signature components

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                   EIP-2612 PERMIT APPROVAL FLOW                        │
│                                                                        │
│ 1. User Wallet  ───[ Off-chain EIP-712 signature ]───> App Frontend    │
│                   (No gas cost)                                        │
│                                                                        │
│ 2. App Frontend ───[ Single on-chain tx: permit + swap ]──> Base L2    │
│                   (One fee, one confirmation)                          │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

A correction worth making up front: EIP-2612 isn't the only, or even the most-used, gasless-approval standard anymore. Uniswap's Permit2, a universal singleton contract deployed at the same address on every major EVM chain, has become the more common integration path for tokens that don't natively implement permit() — a user approves Permit2 once per token, then authorizes every subsequent app interaction with a free signature. And USDC specifically ships with both EIP-2612 permit (added in the USDC 2.0 upgrade, August 2022) and EIP-3009 (transferWithAuthorization), a related but distinct standard that authorizes a one-time transfer to a specific recipient rather than an allowance. Coinbase's own x402 payments documentation treats EIP-3009 as the default gasless path for USDC specifically, with EIP-2612 as a secondary option. For a USDC-settled platform, this matters: the stablecoin leg of a trade may not need a custom permit implementation at all, while a newly bonding-curve-launched token would.

3. How This Applies to a Launchpad Like frfr.fun

A transparency note before this section: frfr.fun is Arin's own platform, so the specific implementation details below — which functions are called, what the fee split is, how the router is architected — are self-reported by the platform rather than independently verifiable by me. I haven't audited frfr.fun's deployed contracts or confirmed these mechanics against BaseScan or a public audit report. Readers evaluating the platform should verify fee splits and contract behavior on-chain directly. What follows describes the pattern frfr.fun says it implements, not confirmed on-chain behavior.

With that framing, here's the described flow:

No separate approval prompt. When a user clicks "Swap," the frontend constructs an EIP-712 structured message (address, exact trade value, a short deadline, a nonce) and asks the wallet to sign it. Signing costs no gas.
Atomic execution. The frontend passes the signature to a router contract, which in a single transaction calls permit(), then transferFrom(), then executes the bonding-curve or AMM swap, then routes fees. If any step fails — expired deadline, slippage exceeded — the whole transaction reverts, so no lingering allowance is left behind.
Scoped, not infinite, approvals. Because each permit authorizes an exact amount with an expiration, there's no standing allowance for a future exploit to drain, which is a genuine security improvement over legacy infinite-approval patterns if implemented correctly — see the risks section below for why that "if" matters.

The 6% creator fee / 14% referrer fee split and other frfr.fun-specific mechanics referenced here are, as in prior pieces, unverified self-descriptions of the platform rather than confirmed facts.

I've also removed a specific claim from the original draft — that "up to 35% of retail users drop off" at the approval modal — because I could not find a credible, sourced figure for that specific number tied to token-approval abandonment. General Web3 onboarding research does show meaningful drop-off at wallet-connection and approval steps, and KYC-gated platforms see drop-off in the 25–70% range depending on methodology, but a precise "35% at the approve step" figure appears to be an unsupported estimate. If frfr.fun has internal funnel data supporting a specific number, that would be a stronger citation than a generic industry claim.

4. Reference Implementation

The following is illustrative, standards-based Solidity — not a description of frfr.fun's actual deployed contracts. It shows the standard OpenZeppelin pattern a newly launched token would need to implement to support permit-based trading.

Token contract:

// 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 ExampleLaunchToken
 * @dev Illustrative ERC-20 with EIP-2612 permit support, following the
 * standard OpenZeppelin ERC20Permit extension.
 */
contract ExampleLaunchToken is ERC20, ERC20Permit {
    constructor(
        string memory name,
        string memory symbol,
        uint256 initialSupply
    )
        ERC20(name, symbol)
        ERC20Permit(name)
    {
        _mint(msg.sender, initialSupply * 10 ** decimals());
    }
}

Router contract (illustrative pattern):

// 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);

    function swapWithPermit(
        address token,
        uint256 amount,
        uint256 deadline,
        uint8 v,
        bytes32 r,
        bytes32 s,
        uint256 minAmountOut
    ) external {
        // Step 1: consume the off-chain signature to set the allowance
        IERC20Permit(token).permit(
            msg.sender,
            address(this),
            amount,
            deadline,
            v,
            r,
            s
        );

        // Step 2: pull the exact authorized amount
        IERC20(token).transferFrom(msg.sender, address(this), amount);

        // Step 3: execute the swap / bonding-curve logic
        uint256 amountOut = _executeSwap(token, amount, minAmountOut);

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

    function _executeSwap(
        address token,
        uint256 amountIn,
        uint256 minOut
    ) internal returns (uint256) {
        // Bonding-curve or AMM execution logic goes here.
        return amountIn; // Simplified placeholder.
    }
}

Frontend signature generation (viem):

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

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

  const value = parseUnits(amount, decimals);
  const deadline = BigInt(Math.floor(Date.now() / 1000) + 60 * 10); // 10-minute window

  const domain = {
    name: tokenName,
    version: '1',
    chainId: 8453, // Base mainnet
    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;

  const signature = await walletClient.signTypedData({
    account: userAddress,
    domain,
    types,
    primaryType: 'Permit',
    message: {
      owner: userAddress,
      spender: spenderAddress,
      value,
      nonce: BigInt(nonce),
      deadline,
    },
  });

  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 };
}

A correction to the original code sample: the domain version and token name must exactly match what the deployed contract's EIP712Domain uses, or the signature will fail verification — this is a common source of "signature invalid" bugs in production. It's worth pulling these values from the contract at runtime rather than hardcoding them, especially since OpenZeppelin's ERC20Permit constructor sets name as the domain name, not the token symbol.

5. Where Account Abstraction Fits — Updated for 2026

The original draft framed ERC-4337 account abstraction and passkey signing as a future direction. As of mid-2026, it's shipped infrastructure, not a roadmap item:

EIP-7702, which lets an existing wallet temporarily delegate to smart-contract logic for a single transaction, activated on Ethereum mainnet with the Pectra upgrade in May 2025. Since then, an estimated 14 million externally owned accounts have signed at least one 7702 delegation, and cumulative paymaster-sponsored gas spend across the ecosystem sits around $180 million, per aggregated Dune dashboard data.
Coinbase launched Base Account (formerly "Sign in with Base") on July 16, 2025 — a smart wallet that's created automatically when a user signs up in the Base app, with one-tap USDC payments via Base Pay and sponsored gas built in. Coinbase has also outlined further native account-abstraction upgrades to Base's stack (referred to as Beryl and Cobalt) through 2026.
Active smart contract accounts across EVM chains are estimated at roughly 62 million as of mid-2026, with Coinbase Smart Wallet and Safe as the largest deployments.

The practical effect for a launchpad: permit-based signing and ERC-4337/7702-based gas sponsorship are complementary, not competing, mechanisms. A user can sign a permit message to authorize a trade and have a paymaster cover the resulting gas fee in the same flow — which is closer to the "zero-friction" experience the original draft describes, but it depends on Base Account or an equivalent smart-wallet layer being in place, not on permit alone.

6. The Part the Original Draft Left Out: Permit Phishing Is a Major, Active Risk

This is the most significant gap in the original piece, and it's important enough to warrant its own section rather than a footnote. Signed, gasless approvals removed the on-chain infinite-approval risk — but they created a new, arguably more dangerous attack surface: the signature prompt itself.

Because a permit signature costs no gas and produces no visible on-chain transaction until it's redeemed, it looks and feels safe to sign. Wallet drainer operators have built an entire attack category around this. According to Scam Sniffer's 2024 annual phishing report, permit-based signature phishing accounted for 56.7% of all token-phishing losses that year, out of roughly $494 million lost across about 332,000 victim addresses — a 67% year-over-year increase. The same research documented a single incident in August 2024 where a victim lost $55.48 million in DAI to an EIP-712 signature that modified a contract-level owner role rather than directly moving funds.

There's genuine progress to report too: Scam Sniffer's data shows 2025 losses fell roughly 83% to about $84 million, which the firm attributes to better wallet-level warnings, transaction simulation, and user education — real improvement, though not a closed problem. Security researchers documented a USDC-specific permit-phishing drain as recently as March 2026, in which a victim signed a permit() message for $1.77 million in USDC after being socially engineered through an address-poisoning technique, and researchers have also flagged EIP-7702 delegation requests as an emerging phishing vector disguised as "wallet security upgrades."

For a platform whose entire value proposition is "sign this instead of paying gas," this history is directly relevant, not tangential. Two implications worth stating plainly for readers:

A gasless signature is not inherently a low-risk action. It authorizes real value movement exactly like an on-chain transaction — it just doesn't cost anything to request, which is precisely what makes it attractive to attackers as a phishing lure.
Exact-amount, deadline-bound permits (the pattern described in Section 3) are a real mitigation against dormant infinite allowances, but they do nothing to protect a user who is tricked into signing a malicious permit message in the first place. Wallet-side transaction simulation, careful reading of EIP-712 prompts (spender address, amount, deadline), and periodic revocation of stale approvals remain necessary regardless of which permit standard a platform uses.

This isn't a reason to avoid EIP-2612 — it's a reason to be precise about what problem it solves (gas cost and standing allowances) versus what problem it doesn't solve (signature phishing), which the original draft's "Security Nightmares" framing did not distinguish.

7. Regulatory and Risk Context

Gas-fee mechanics are a UX and engineering topic, not a securities-law one, but it's worth noting briefly that any platform combining USDC settlement, bonding-curve token issuance, and creator/referrer fee splits — as frfr.fun describes itself — operates within the same evolving U.S. token-taxonomy and stablecoin-disclosure landscape covered in earlier pieces on this blog (the SEC/CFTC token categorization framework and the GENIUS Act's stablecoin provisions). Nothing about implementing EIP-2612 changes that regulatory posture one way or the other; it's a transport-layer optimization, not a change to what's being sold or how.

8. Conclusion

EIP-2612 is a real, well-specified, five-year-old standard that does exactly one thing well: it replaces a paid on-chain approval with a free off-chain signature, cutting a two-transaction flow down to one. Combined with Base's L2 fee structure and, increasingly, ERC-4337/EIP-7702-based gas sponsorship, it's a meaningful UX improvement over the legacy approve()/transferFrom() pattern.

It is not, on its own, a complete security story — permit-style signatures have become one of the largest phishing vectors in DeFi over the past two years, even as 2025 showed real improvement. Any platform adopting this pattern, frfr.fun included, is trading one class of risk (dormant infinite approvals) for a different one (signature-phishing exposure) that requires its own mitigations on the wallet and frontend side.

Corrections and Transparency Log

Removed unmet claim: The original draft stated "up to 35% of retail users drop off when presented with an 'Approve Token' modal." I could not locate a credible, sourced figure matching this specific claim and have removed it, replacing it with general (and separately sourced) context on Web3 onboarding drop-off rates.
Added missing risk coverage: The original draft characterized EIP-2612 as unambiguously more secure than legacy approvals and did not mention signature-phishing risk. Added Section 6 with sourced data (Scam Sniffer 2024/2025 annual reports, DarkNavy incident analysis) on permit-based phishing, which is a material and directly relevant risk category the original omitted entirely.
Corrected framing on USDC specifically: The original draft implied a custom FRFRToken.sol implementation is the primary path to gasless approvals on the platform. Added context that USDC itself (the platform's settlement asset) has shipped both EIP-2612 permit (since August 2022) and EIP-3009 transferWithAuthorization natively since Circle's USDC 2.0 upgrade, and that Coinbase's own payment infrastructure (x402) treats EIP-3009 as the default gasless-USDC mechanism. A custom permit implementation is chiefly needed for newly launched bonding-curve tokens, not for the USDC leg of a trade.
Added missing alternative standard: Noted Uniswap's Permit2 as the more widely integrated universal-approval standard in 2026, since many tokens (unlike a purpose-built launch token) don't natively implement EIP-2612 and rely on Permit2 instead.
Updated stale account-abstraction section: The original draft framed ERC-4337/passkey account abstraction as a forward-looking "meets" section. Updated with current, sourced 2026 status: EIP-7702 activation via Pectra (May 2025), adoption figures (~14M EOA delegations, ~$180M paymaster spend, ~62M active smart accounts, per aggregated Dune data), and Coinbase's Base Account / Base Pay launch (July 16, 2025).
Flagged platform-specific claims as unverifiable: All frfr.fun-specific implementation details — the exact permit/router flow, the 6% creator / 14% referrer fee split, and claims about user conversion or trading velocity — are self-reported platform descriptions, not independently verified against deployed contracts or audit reports. This is noted directly in Section 3 rather than presented as confirmed fact.
Corrected a technical accuracy gap in the code sample: Noted that the EIP-712 domain's name/version fields must match the deployed contract exactly, which was not called out in the original frontend integration example and is a common cause of signature-verification failures.
Added brief regulatory framing: The original draft had no risk/regulatory section at all. Added a short section (7) noting this is a UX/engineering topic distinct from, but adjacent to, ongoing U.S. token-taxonomy and stablecoin regulatory developments covered elsewhere on this blog.
Removed metadata/formatting artifacts from the original draft (embedded video title/caption line, inconsistent header punctuation) and reformatted into clean Markdown.
Unresolved: I did not independently verify frfr.fun's deployed router or token contract addresses on BaseScan. If you want that verification included (contract address, verified source match, any audit reports), send me the addresses and I can check them directly.

Sources referenced: EIP-2612 official specification (eips.ethereum.org); OpenZeppelin ERC20Permit documentation; Circle developer documentation on USDC authorization methods (EIP-2612, EIP-3009, Permit2); Coinbase x402 network support documentation; Scam Sniffer 2024/2025 annual phishing reports (via secondary analysis); DarkNavy incident writeup, March 2026; Dune Analytics aggregated EIP-7702/ERC-4337 adoption data (via secondary analysis, May–June 2026); Coinbase/Base Account launch coverage, July 2025.