The Two-Token Problem: Why Sending Stablecoins Shouldn’t Require Gas Tokens

We've all been there. You've got an urgent payment to send, and USDT on your exchange of choice. You withdraw to your wallet to send the money onward – And then, transaction failed – out of gas.

Stuck with all of your USDT in your wallet and no way to send it out, you scramble for a solution: Do you liquidate some of your longs? Load up into your exchange using fiat? Or message a friend to lend you some TRX to send those stables back to the exchange to turn into gas?

All of the options are long winded and seem totally impractical, and this problem is one which we've all not only experienced but lamented over many times in the past. So, if gas tokens are so impractical and cumbersome, why do they exist in the first place?

Gas Tokens: Then, a Necessary Measure

The answer starts back in 2015, with Ethereum. Bitcoin had transaction fees – a blunt anti-spam measure priced by the byte, keeping the mempool from drowning in junk. But Ethereum introduced something harder: a virtual machine, executing code that every single node on the network had to run and verify.

… Continue reading the full article at the original source below.