Using the Gas Tank
What is a Gas Tank
The Gas Tank within Levain is meant to be a hot wallet that is used to pay for network fees incurred by your wallets. Recall that the Gas Tank, being a hot wallet, has a private key managed by Levain meant for multiple purposes – co-signing of transactions, automating tranaction broadcasting, wallet recovery in case of a lost key, and more.
This guide is meant to explain the purpose of a Gas Tank. To understand more about network fees, please refer to the Understanding network fees guide.
Purpose of the Gas Tank
Due to the nature of specific blockchains and how Levain implements wallet creation, Levain is designed with a Gas Tank for certain blockchains, to fund the execution of specific transactions on the blockchain. A Gas Tank is meant to be a hot wallet that is used to pay for network fees, including:
- Creating or activating wallets
- Executing smart contract wallet transactions
- Deploying deposit addresses when using the Deposit Address feature
- Forwarding assets from Deposit Addresses to a Levain Wallet
Although Levain holds the Gas Tank's private key, given the nature of multi-signature wallets, Levain will never be able to move funds from your wallets without your explicit permission.
The private key of the Gas Tank is held by Levain for two primary reasons:
- Security. Levain restricts use of the Gas Tank with strict role-based access control. Only authorized users of your organization can use the Gas Tank to execute transactions.
- Automation. with the private key, Levain is able to handle complex flows to execute each Wallet's transactions. This greatly reduces complexities for the user and ultimately provides a better user experience while not compromising security.
Blockchains that require a Gas Tank
In Levain, the following blockchains require a Gas Tank:
- EVM-compatible blockchains
- Ethereum
- Polygon
- BNB Chain
- Arbitrum
- Avalanche
- Tron
Uses of a Gas Tank
Levain uses the Gas Tank to execute the following actions.
| Blockchain | Create Wallet | Execute Transactions | Deploy Wallet Deposit Address | Flush Wallet Deposit Address |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ethereum | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Polygon | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| BNB Chain | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Arbitrum | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Optimism | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Base | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Tron | ✅ | Wallet pays for transactions | ✅ | Deposit address pays for transaction |
For Tron specifically, we will be working on adding support for the dripping method -- that is, dripping a pre-defined amount of tokens required to cover for gas, from the Gas Tank to the Deposit Addresses. This will allow you to fund your Gas Tank, and have the Gas Tank drip funds to your Wallets when there are incoming deposits detected on your Deposit Addresses.
Creating your Gas Tank
Creating a Gas Tank is a one-time process for every organization account, during the wallet creation flow. You will be prompted to create a Gas Tank if you are creating a wallet on a blockchain that requires a Gas Tank.
Bear in mind that the Gas Tank, while having the same underlying private key, may have different addresses on different blockchains. Addresses on EVM-compatible blockchains will share the same address starting with 0x..., while addresses on Tron will bear a different format starting with T....
Funding your Gas Tank
You should maintain a sufficient balance in your Gas Tank to ensure that your transactions can be executed. If your Gas Tank runs out of funds, you will not be able to perform the actions listed above in the Uses of a Gas Tank section.
Withdrawing from your Gas Tank
At this point, Levain does not support withdrawing from your Gas Tank. If you would like to withdraw from your Gas Tank, please contact the Levain Product Team.