In the fourth quarter of 2023, Alchemy experienced an unexpected surge in ERC-4337 smart contracts, creating over 960,000 accounts.
This explosion of interest highlights app developers’ passion for solving user experience problems, according to Alchemy’s report.
Will Hennessy, Head of Account Abstraction at Alchemy expressed surpriseThis can be attributed to the rapid adoption of the Ethereum Foundation’s deployment and developers’ eagerness to solve user experience issues.
“The Ethereum Foundation deployed the ERC-4337 contract in March 2023, so this early adoption is faster than expected,” he said via his personal X account. “It shows how hungry app developers can solve (user experience) problems like gas sponsorship.”
Unlike traditional wallet accounts, smart accounts allow users to create ‘user actions’ rather than simple transactions. According to Hennessy, this innovation “shows how hungry app developers can solve (user experience) problems like gas sponsorship.”
This feature improves efficiency, especially in trading and gaming. ERC-4337 introduces sponsored transactions, allowing companies to cover gas fees for their users. Hennessy highlights this as “a departure from the current methodology, where fees are paid only in the network’s native currency.”
This standard is also an important step toward making web3 more user-friendly by improving security and convenience through multi-signature transactions and simplified account recovery. Hennessy emphasizes that account abstraction’s role in promoting easy adoption of web3 apps will continue to attract a diverse user base.
“Account abstraction makes it easy for anyone to start using web3 apps,” he said. “By lowering the barrier to entry through social logins and gas sponsorships, apps can onboard more users, even those with low intent.”
Driven by apps like Grindery, FanTV, and Cyberconnect, user operations by ‘bundlers’ increased significantly by 194% in the fourth quarter.
“Right now, retention rates are largely determined by how useful the application is,” says Hennessey. “They are constantly developing new features to keep users engaged.”
The introduction of paymaster, which allows gas fees to be paid with ERC-20 tokens, has proven popular and covers approximately $1.16 million in gas fees.
Hennessey emphasizes that “flexibility in paying transaction fees remains a popular demand from users.”