Why Your Solana dApp is Losing Users at the Gas Fee Step

You've built something amazing. Your Solana dApp is fast, the UX is polished, and you're ready for users. They connect their wallet, excited to try it out.

Then they see it: "Insufficient SOL for transaction fees."

They leave. They never come back.

This isn't a hypothetical. This is happening to your app right now. And it's costing you more users than you think.

The Numbers Don't Lie

The average Solana transaction costs less than a tenth of a cent. But that tiny friction point—requiring users to acquire SOL before they can do anything—kills conversion rates.

Every step is a user lost. The gas fee step is especially brutal because it requires preparation before engagement. Users need to solve a problem they don't care about before experiencing value.

What Gasless Actually Means

"Gasless" doesn't mean free. Someone still pays. It means you pay instead of your user.

Here's how it works technically:

1. User creates and signs a transaction (proves their intent)
2. Your fee payer service adds its signature as the fee payer
3. Transaction is submitted to the network
4. You pay ~$0.001, user pays nothing

On Solana, this is enabled by a feature where the account paying fees doesn't need to be the same account initiating the action. The Kora protocol makes this easy to implement.

The Math That Should Convince You

Let's do some napkin math:

• You spend $100/month on marketing
• You get 1,000 wallet connections
• 73% bounce at the gas fee step = 730 users lost
• Cost per lost user: $0.14

Now with gasless:

• Same 1,000 connections
• Conversion improves to 60% (conservative)
• You pay 600 × $0.001 = $0.60 in fees
• You retain 330 extra users
• Cost per retained user: $0.002

When Gasless Makes Sense

Gasless isn't for everything. It makes sense when:

• Onboarding new users: First 3-5 transactions sponsored
• Consumer apps: Games, social, anything mass-market
• NFT mints: Remove friction at the point of sale
• Loyalty programs: Users shouldn't pay to claim rewards

It makes less sense for:

• DeFi power users (they have SOL)
• High-value transactions (fee is negligible anyway)
• Unlimited actions (potential for abuse)

Implementation: Simpler Than You Think

Here's the basic flow with Kora:

// User creates transaction as normal
const tx = new Transaction().add(
  yourInstruction
);

// Don't set feePayer - let the sponsor do it
// User signs to prove intent
const signed = await wallet.signTransaction(tx);

// Send to fee payer service
const response = await fetch('https://your-sponsor/sign_and_send', {
  method: 'POST',
  body: JSON.stringify({
    transaction: signed.serialize().toString('base64')
  })
});

// Done - user never needed SOL
const { signature } = await response.json();

The complexity is in running the fee payer service: managing keys, allowlisting programs, rate limiting, monitoring balances. That's why services like MacMini Gas Station exist.

Try It

I'm building MacMini Gas Station—a simple service where you pay me to sponsor your users' transactions. Flat rate, no surprises.