The problem: per-chain gas
Every blockchain wants to be paid in its own native token before it will process your transaction. Ethereum and the EVM family want ETH (or the gas token of whatever rollup or sidechain you happen to be on). Solana wants SOL. TON wants Toncoin. This is gas, and it is the single most persistent source of friction in multi-chain crypto.
The consequence is subtle but constant. To stay operational across several networks you have to keep a small float of each chain's native token sitting idle in your wallet, purely so you can pay fees. The moment one of those balances runs dry, transactions on that chain simply fail — not because you lack the asset you want to move, but because you lack the unrelated token the network charges for the privilege of moving it. Anyone who has tried to rescue a stranded stablecoin on a chain where they had no native gas knows exactly how absurd this feels: the funds are right there, and you cannot touch them.
For a single chain this is a minor annoyance. Across EVM networks, Solana and TON at once it becomes a real tax on your attention. You are forced to think about a token you never wanted to hold, top it up before it matters, and repeat that chore on every network you use.
Gas abstraction in WATS
Gas abstraction is the idea that the fee you pay and the token the underlying network charges in do not have to be the same thing. WATS applies this through a single fee token, ATS. In the WATS Hot Wallet, swaps, transfers and staking are all paid for in ATS, regardless of whether the action settles on an EVM chain, on Solana or on TON. You hold one fee token, and that one token covers everything.
The practical effect is that the chain you are working on stops being something you have to provision for. You do not keep ETH aside for an Ethereum action, SOL aside for a Solana action and Toncoin aside for a TON action. You keep ATS, and WATS handles the translation between that single balance and whatever each network expects underneath. The native gas tokens still exist and the networks still get paid — that part never goes away — but it stops being your problem to juggle.
How a fee is handled
It helps to see the sequence end to end. Nothing here involves a magic discount or a hidden formula; it is a clean ordering of who does what, and at no point are you asked to think about the native gas token of the chain you are on.
- You initiate an action. You start a swap, a transfer or a staking operation in the WATS Hot Wallet, exactly as you would in any wallet. You choose the asset and the destination; you do not choose a gas token.
- WATS estimates the underlying network cost. Behind the scenes, WATS works out what the action will actually cost on the relevant network — the real on-chain gas that the chain will demand to include and confirm your transaction.
- The fee is denominated and charged in ATS. Instead of asking you for that chain's native token, the fee is expressed and taken in a single token, ATS. This is the step where gas abstraction happens: the network's requirement is satisfied, but you settled it in one consistent currency.
- The action is confirmed on-chain. The transaction is submitted and confirmed on its network like any other. The chain sees a normal, valid transaction; you only ever managed one fee token to make it happen.
Read the four steps again and notice what is absent: you were never told to go and acquire the chain's gas token first, and you never had to switch your mental model when the action happened to live on a different network. That absence is the entire point.
How dual custody relates
It is worth being precise here, because two distinct WATS ideas are easy to blur together. The fee model is about which token pays. Dual custody is about who controls the keys. They operate on different layers and one does not change the other.
The WATS Hot Wallet uses a dual-custody design in which control is split across two separate keys — one held by you and one held by WATS. Neither key moves funds on its own; an action needs both sides to participate. That is a security property of the wallet itself, and it is entirely independent of how fees are denominated.
Paying a fee in ATS does not hand any custody to WATS, and it does not weaken the split-key model. When you confirm an action, the dual-custody handshake is what authorises the transaction; charging the fee in ATS rather than in native gas is simply how that authorised transaction gets paid for. The two systems are designed to coexist: one keeps the wallet secure, the other keeps the fee experience simple. Conflating them — assuming that a single fee token implies a single point of control — gets the model exactly backwards.
Why one token simplifies multi-chain
The benefits of a single fee token are not abstract; they fall out directly from removing the per-chain gas chore.
- One balance to manage. You watch a single fee token instead of tracking native-gas balances on every network you touch. Topping up is one decision, not one decision per chain.
- Fewer failed transactions. A large share of "out of gas" failures are not really about the asset you are moving — they are about an empty native-gas balance on some chain you forgot to fund. Collapsing fees into one token removes that whole class of avoidable failure.
- Less cognitive load. You stop context-switching between chains just to reason about fees. The mental overhead of "do I have gas here?" disappears, which is the kind of friction that quietly makes multi-chain feel harder than it should.
None of this makes the underlying networks cheaper or removes on-chain costs — gas still exists and still has to be paid. What changes is where the complexity lives. With one fee token, it lives inside the wallet instead of inside your head.
Where to go next
If you want the canonical reference for the fee model itself — the terminology and the exact framing of how a charge is handled — start with the ATS fee page. To understand the wallet that the model runs inside, including the dual-custody design described above, see the WATS Hot Wallet overview.
And if your interest is less about WATS specifically and more about the category — how single fee-token wallets work in general and how to evaluate them honestly against other approaches — read the best single fee-token wallets.
FAQ
Does paying fees in ATS mean WATS holds my funds?
No. The fee token is separate from custody. The WATS Hot Wallet uses a dual-custody model where you and WATS each hold a key and neither can move funds alone. Charging a fee in ATS does not change that arrangement.
Do I still need the native gas token of each chain?
Not for fees inside the WATS Hot Wallet. The whole point of gas abstraction is that you pay in ATS while WATS settles the underlying network cost, so you are not forced to keep ETH, SOL, Toncoin and the rest on hand just to transact.
Which actions can be paid for in ATS?
Swaps, transfers and staking in the WATS Hot Wallet are covered by the single ATS fee, across EVM chains, Solana and TON.