Introducing Gelato Relay: A Fast & Reliable Multichain Transaction API
Tags: blockchain, devops, nft, play2earn
Published: 2022-05-16 18:23:22

One of the most exciting topics in web3 lately has been P2E Games, Metaverse, and social media applications. Projects such as ZED Run, Decentraland, or Aave’s Lens Protocol have taken the industry by storm and showcased how smart contracts can be used to create novel applications that will drive the next big wave of web3 adoption.

However, unfortunately for most end-users today, despite the recent hype, many applications still lack user-friendly onboarding and interaction experiences. Most new users are not crypto veterans, yet still they get exposed to having to deal with all the quirks that blockchains such as Ethereum demand to understand from its users.

For example, in order to get onboarded onto a P2E gaming application, users are required to complete the following steps before even being able to try out the game:

1. 1. Set up a wallet such as MetaMask
2. 2. Configure the right rpc for each network
3. 3. Purchase or bridge the blockchains native token (e.g. ETH on Ethereum)
4. Potentially purchase the dApps’ native token
5. Potentially purchase some in-game avatar / equipment / skin
6. For every smart contract interaction, configure the right gas price and resubmit transactions in case they get stuck

Once a user is fully onboarded to the dApp, oftentimes they are required to interact with a blockchain for any action they have to perform by submitting transactions. In order to create and execute transactions, they need to pay gas fees. If the user does not have a sufficient balance of the network token or their transaction got stuck because there was a sudden gas price spike, they do not have the option to try out the application altogether which leads to high bounce rates for projects.

There is so much user friction with the conventional dApp architecture that it is difficult for dApps like games or metaverse projects to attract & offer friendly user experiences.

## Enter Gelato Relay: A Fast & Reliable Transaction API

Gelato Relay is a new service built on top of the Gelato Network, which helps web3 application and infrastructure developers to use a simple API in order to get arbitrary transactions mined fast, cost-effective and reliable on behalf of their users or protocol. This new feature enables use cases such as gasless transactions which solve common UX problems such as the need to switch between multiple networks or worry about stuck transactions.

## How Gelato Relay Works

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/5mzz8eo0b6dauim2ea75.png)

The goal of the Gelato Relay SDK is to abstract away all the complexities of EVM based blockchain networks which include:

- Chain Reorgs
- Providers unresponsive
- Providers returning errors
- Providers out of sync with the chain
- Txs underpriced
- Txs stuck in mempool
- Txs overpriced (max gas price)
- Nonce already used
- Dealing with multiple transaction types on different networks
- Keeping up to date with underlying blockchain changes

This is achieved by enabling dApp developers to access Gelato’s decentralized Executor network to not only accept deferred transactions (i.e. conditional or recurring) through services like Gelato Ops, but also facilitate the relaying of instant transactions which need to be mined right away.

Developers can simply define a) a smart contract address, b) a payload (e.g. a signed message from a user claiming their funds) and c) a payment methodology and then submit this information to Gelato’s endpoint in order for the network to get the transaction mined instantly.

## Features

Flexible payment methods: Sponsoring gas fees for users, letting users pay within the transaction themselves with a broad range of tokens, and allowing approve / transferFrom payments

- Reliable transaction execution: Transactions get confirmed faster, more securely, and with optimized gas costs
- No single point of failure: Transactions are executed by Gelato’s decentralized Executor Network rather than by a centralized node run by the projects development team
- Multichain: Gelato Relay supports over 10 different EVM chains, including Ethereum, Polygon, BNB, and many more
- Privacy by default: If the dApp is on Ethereum, transactions will be submitted via Flashbots, thus ensuring greater transaction privacy and offering MEV protection
- Time and cost savings: Outsourcing all the heavy lifting of creating, running, and maintaining the required infrastructure, developers can minimize infrastructure bills as well as required development time

Gelato Relay empowers developers to focus on what is truly important: building the best possible product and focusing on their users, rather than having to waste time running the required infrastructure needed to get transactions mined reliably on all EVM-based networks.

## Example #1: P2E games

For example, let’s imagine a P2E game where users can participate in car races. Rather than having to manually send transactions themselves and pay the underlying gas costs to participate in a certain race, users can instead a) sign a message off-chain and b) send that signed message via Gelato’s Relay SDK to Gelato’s Executor Network which then get the transaction mined fast and reliably on the specified network.

Gelato Executors pay the required gas fees and can get reimbursed in a variety of different payment modes. On top of the gas fee they pay on each transaction, Gelato gets to charge a small fee as an incentive.

## Example #2: Bridges & cross-chain messaging protocols

Besides gaming, another segment that greatly benefits from Gelato Relay is infrastructure projects such as bridges. The job of bridges is to reliably move assets between as many chains as possible. This requires a reliable transaction execution service that will enable users to lock their funds on one chain and claim them on the other.

By relaying transactions across multiple chains using a single API, Gelato Relay offers bridges the scalability, liveness, and efficiency they need in order to offer seamless and near-instant interactions to their users.

In fact, one of web3’s most used bridges, [Connext](https://medium.com/gelato-network/connext-and-gelato-work-together-to-automate-cross-chain-erc20-transfers-using-gelatos-multichain-991c67667e9c), has been using Gelato Relay since 2021 in production and has processed over 1.25 million transactions on over 5 different EVM-based blockchains in a reliable and cost-effective fashion.

Gelato Relay can not only be used to merely transfer assets but to execute arbitrary transactions, meaning cross-chain messaging protocols like LayerZero or Nomad can also adopt the service to further decentralize and improve the robustness of their protocol.

## Get started!

Documentation for how to get started can be found [here](https://docs.gelato.network/developer-products/relay-sdk). If you have questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to us on [Discord](https://discord.com/invite/ApbA39BKyJ).

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For more about Gelato: https://gelato.network/