Ethereum proposal EIP-8141 would allow users to pay transaction fees in tokens or have another party cover the fees entirely, Vitalik Buterin said on Sunday. The proposal is still a draft and has not been scheduled for inclusion in any network upgrade. Ethereum’s base rules require fees to be paid in ETH, which is why wallets need an ether balance even when the assets they move are something else.

EIP-8141 introduces “Frame” transactions, replacing Ethereum’s fixed transaction structure with a sequence of up to 64 frames. Each frame is an ordinary contract call. One can validate the transaction, another can approve who pays the gas, and the remaining frames can execute the actions requested by the user.

“A lot of important progress on Frames (EIP-8141) has been quietly happening over the last few months. Highly recommend reading this, also the updated EIP — vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin), September 5, 2026

By separating payment approval into its own step, the proposal breaks the link between the account that signs a transaction and the account that funds it. A wallet holding only stablecoins could therefore pay fees in ERC-20 tokens, while an application could sponsor transaction costs for its users.

No new wallet required

Similar functionality has been available since 2023 through ERC-4337, but that system routes transactions through a separate mempool and relies on third-party bundlers. Frames would operate through Ethereum’s public mempool, with protocol rules allowing nodes to evaluate a transaction’s validation steps before accepting it.

The specification also covers ordinary externally owned accounts. It defines “default code” that would provide wallets without deployed contracts with sponsored transactions, token-paid gas and batched calls, without requiring users to migrate to smart accounts.

Frames would also allow multiple actions to be grouped so they either all succeed or all fail. This could prevent the dangling token approvals that can remain when a swap reverts. The proposal also separates accounts from the ECDSA keys that control them, enabling key rotation.

The proposal addresses more than transaction fees. Its authors describe Frames as a “native off-ramp” from the elliptic-curve cryptography Ethereum currently uses for authentication, ahead of the arrival of quantum computers capable of breaking that cryptography. Co-author Matt Garnett, who writes as lightclient, said post-quantum signatures can reach several kilobytes each, pushing the network toward signature aggregation.

EIP-8141 has been a draft since January and is not scheduled for any upgrade. As a draft, it remains a specification under discussion rather than a finalized standard, and like any EIP it would take effect only if accepted for inclusion in a future network upgrade. Buterin pointed to a testnet operated by the ethrex client that combines Frames with FOCIL, a censorship-resistance mechanism, to allow privacy protocols to operate without relayers.

“Frames should be the last transaction type we need for accounts,” Garnett wrote.

The proposal is available through the Ethereum Improvement Proposal.