ERC-4337 Smart Accounts: Low Adoption in Latest Figures

John Rising, an advocate for Ethereum account abstraction, has disclosed “sobering” data indicating that ERC-4437 adoption has been anything but ideal on the whole.

Rising shared data points in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on November 14 that demonstrated ERC-4337-enabled smart accounts experienced a decrease in users, low transaction activity, and inadequate operational costs for providers of core infrastructure.

The ERC-4337 standard was introduced via an unexpected declaration on March 1 at the WalletCon conference held in Denver.

At the time, there was widespread optimism regarding the rapid adoption of “smart accounts” on Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible blockchains.

This was because the technology would enable users to circumvent the need for seed phrases and signatures for specific transactions and would generally improve the user experience.

Annual account retention, according to data from the account abstraction data platform BundleBear, was “terrible” at 6.89 percent, with only six-eighths of the initial smart accounts remaining active for months.

However, although some projects inadvertently paid bundlers “too much” in gas, Rising noted that bundlers, which are essential infrastructure components that enable smart accounts to operate on EVM-compatible chains, were mainly unprofitable.

Furthermore, it was discovered that the mean number of user operations transmitted by a smart account was five, which refers to the implementation of activities or transactions from the account.

Jesse Pollak, the founder and main developer of the Coinbase protocols, refuted Rising’s characterization of the figures as “sobering.”

Rather, he predicted that the implementation of the novel technology would occur “gradually, then abruptly.” “It seems absurdly early.

Pollak stated, “It appears that standardization is taking place and growth is sound.” “Additional teams with whom I speak are making the transition.”

August was the most active month for active account abstraction wallets, according to Dune Analytics data, with over 420,000 active smart accounts spanning seven blockchains.

The number of monthly active smart accounts. Source: Dune Analytics

Active smart accounts decreased marginally but consistently in October, when 143,000 monthly active accounts were recorded.