Zero-Gas Autonomous Agents: Account Abstraction on Base L2

Autonomous agents broken by gas starvation are a chronic failure mode in crypto.

If your LLM runtime or deterministic bot runs out of native ETH, execution halts instantly. Funding hundreds of sub-agents with fractional gas amounts fragments capital, introduces operational overhead, and exposes private keys on hot instances just to sign raw transactions.

The fix isn't complicated: run your agents through ERC-4337 Account Abstraction on Base (Chain ID 8453) using a Paymaster. The agent generates cryptographic intent via UserOperation; a dedicated treasury subsidizes the execution. Zero native ETH touches the agent runtime.

When an autonomous agent needs to execute an arbitrage trade, update an oracle, or settle an inference attestment on Base, forcing it to handle gas lifecycle creates three systemic problems:

By decoupling execution rights from gas settlement via ERC-4337, we treat the agent as an ephemeral signer. Its only artifact is a secp256k1 or passkey signature validating a UserOperation.

+------------------+         UserOp          +-------------------+
| Autonomous Agent | --------------------->  | Bundler / Alt-RPC |
|  (No ETH Bal)    |                         +-------------------+
+------------------+                                   |
         ^                                             v
         | ECDSA Sign                    +-----------------------------+
         |                               | Paymaster Contract (Base)   |
+------------------+                     | Funds: 0x92Aff...Ad919      |
| Agent Local Key  |                     +-----------------------------+
+------------------+                                   |
                                                       v
                                         +-----------------------------+
                                         | EntryPoint (0x000...05EE)   |
                                         | Executes Target Contract    |
                                         +-----------------------------+

Below is a production-grade Python script executing a gasless payload on Base mainnet. The agent constructs a UserOp, routes the payload through a Paymaster sponsored by an autonomous treasury vault (0x92Aff59709b03b9373b8fA887D24953D60fAd919), and fires it to an ERC-4337 bundler.

import os
import json
import requests
from eth_account import Account
from eth_account.messages import encode_defunct
from web3 import Web3

RPC_URL = "https://mainnet.base.org"
CHAIN_ID = 8453
ENTRY_POINT = "0x5FF137D4b0FDCD49DcA30c7CF57E578a026d2789"
TREASURY_PAYMASTER = "0x92Aff59709b03b9373b8fA887D24953D60fAd919"
BUNDLER_URL = os.getenv("BASE_BUNDLER_RPC", "https://api.pimlico.io/v2/8453/rpc?apikey=YOUR_KEY")

w3 = Web3(Web3.HTTPProvider(RPC_URL))
agent_account = Account.from_key(os.getenv("AGENT_PRIVATE_KEY"))

def dispatch_autonomous_op(target_contract: str, call_data: bytes):
    user_op = {
        "sender": agent_account.address,
        "nonce": hex(w3.eth.get_transaction_count(agent_account.address)),
        "initCode": "0x",  # Empty if smart account is deployed
        "callData": call_data.hex() if isinstance(call_data, bytes) else call_data,
        "callGasLimit": hex(120000),
        "verificationGasLimit": hex(150000),
        "preVerificationGas": hex(45000),
        "maxFeePerGas": hex(w3.eth.gas_price),
        "maxPriorityFeePerGas": hex(w3.to_wei(0.05, "gwei")),
        "paymasterAndData": TREASURY_PAYMASTER.lower(), # Sponsoring contract
        "signature": "0x"
    }

    pm_payload = {
        "jsonrpc": "2.0",
        "method": "pm_sponsorUserOperation",
        "params": [user_op, ENTRY_POINT],
        "id": 1
    }
    pm_resp = requests.post(BUNDLER_URL, json=pm_payload).json()
    if "result" in pm_resp:
        user_op["paymasterAndData"] = pm_resp["result"]["paymasterAndData"]

    op_hash = Web3.solidity_keccak(
        ["address", "uint256", "bytes32"],
        [ENTRY_POINT, CHAIN_ID, Web3.keccak(text=json.dumps(user_op, sort_keys=True))]
    )

    signed_msg = Account.sign_message(encode_defunct(op_hash), agent_account.key)
    user_op["signature"] = signed_msg.signature.hex()

    send_payload = {
        "jsonrpc": "2.0",
        "method": "eth_sendUserOperation",
        "params": [user_op, ENTRY_POINT],
        "id": 2
    }
    res = requests.post(BUNDLER_URL, json=send_payload)
    return res.json()

Operating this architecture at scale yields predictable baseline economics:

0x92Aff59709b03b9373b8fA887D24953D60fAd919