Zero-Gas Autonomous Agents: Using Account Abstraction and Paymasters on Base L2

Autonomous agents that run out of ETH for gas can fail mid-task, and funding each agent's externally owned account directly exposes private keys and requires manual top-ups. The article proposes separating the agent's signing identity from the account that pays fees, using ERC-4337 account abstraction with a Paymaster on Base L2 (Chain ID 8453). In this design, the agent signs UserOperations with a restricted session key, and a Paymaster sponsors gas or debits ERC-20 tokens from a treasury balance. The author argues this limits damage if an agent is compromised, since an attacker can only invoke functions allowed by the wallet's validation logic rather than drain native ETH reserves. The piece includes a Python example for constructing and submitting a sponsored UserOp on Base.