How will regular users be able to use dApps without buying ether?

Question

Requiring users to get ether before they can use a dApp, is too much of a barrier for any kind of mainstream adoption. If dApps offer free ether in a naive way, they can be attacked by Sybils where a user just creates many "accounts" to get the free ether. What are potential solutions and which ones are closer in actual practicality?

Answer 1

There are several options:

• dApp developers/companies can pay the transaction fees themselves, but only for transactions that interact with their app, and with some sort of rate limiting the way most real-world web apps work. This is what OneName did when their product depended on the need for fees to be paid in NameCoin, for example.
• Various techniques can be used to exchange other types of value for ether in realtime as needed. For example, if a user wants to have new features added to their Bitcoin wallet that make use of the Ethereum network, Bitcoins can be silently exchanged for ether in the background via a decentralised exchange based on BTCrelay, especially if it is payment channel enabled to make the exchange nearly instantaneous. If bitcoins can be sidechained into Ethereum, then technically fees can be paid directly in Bitcoin as well--there is nothing stopping a miner from including a transaction with a gas price of 0 but containing a claimable "BTC token" fee.
• The needed transactions can be "farmed out" to the general public via a similar mechanism to the Ethereum Alarm Clock, provided that the transactions create value, and some of that value can be portioned off to the users who publish transactions on behalf of non-ether-holders.

etc.

In the long range, however, it probably makes sense for most people to just start an Ethereum account and put a few ether in it, then use that account across all the dApps they want to make use of.

Answer 2

I think unless they are just observing the dApp - they have to buy ether to actually manipulate the dapp. For example, you can view Augur for it's predictive answers without placing a bet on some future event. But to place a bet - you may need either ethers or some other token. I wonder if you would need ethers to send the other token - I think the answer is yes.

Answer 3

There is an Ethereum Improvement Proposal on this: ERC865: Pay transfers in tokens instead of gas, in one transaction, with a sample Solidity code

Answer 4

Adding to Jeff Coleman's great answer:

• A company could give a user ether and then charge the user as part of an overall fee in a normal fiat currency. The company could have a DApp which is a mobile app which works with an Ethereum contract. The company has the user install this app, which creates an account for the user of the Ethereum contract, and transfers some ether to the account after some out of band authentication. The user can then use the app which will interact with the contract. The company includes the cost of the ether as part of their overall fee.

Answer 5

From CRYPTO-CURRENCY with Ethereum I found this solution in Autorefill section.

In order to do that, first you need to create a variable that will hold the threshold amount and a function to change it. If you don't know any value, set it to 5 finney (0.005 ether).

uint minBalanceForAccounts;

function setMinBalance(uint minimumBalanceInFinney) onlyOwner {
     minBalanceForAccounts = minimumBalanceInFinney * 1 finney;
}

    /* Send coins */
function transfer(address _to, uint256 _value) {
    ...
    if(_to.balance<minBalanceForAccounts)
        _to.send((minBalanceForAccounts-_to.balance)/sellPrice);
}

1. Could It be a valide solution in my case (new user signin)?
2. How can I know - before the transaction - the cost of function call (in solidity or in web3)?