Expert notes waning interest in Ethereum smart accounts

Smart accounts with support for ERC-4337 have faced a decline in user numbers and low transaction activity. These ‘sobering’ findings were shared by Stackup co-founder John Rising.

Retention is terrible.

The one exception to this is CyberConnect, who had a lot of users return to claim an airdrop.

Data: @0xBundleBear pic.twitter.com/TUzQQJYcp8

— John Rising (@johnrising_) November 13, 2023

ERC-4337 introduces the concept of account abstractions (АУЗ), a mechanism capable of extending the capabilities of crypto wallets known as smart accounts, and enhancing their security through specialized configuration. 

According to the BundleBear data cited by Rising, only 6.89% of smart accounts created six months ago show activity.

The expert also noted the costliness of the EVM-packagers — the main components of the infrastructure that enable AA profiles to operate in EVM-compatible networks. Some projects, he noted, were ‘accidentally paying them too much’ gas, according to Stackup’s head.

The average smart account performed only five user operations, which could be either ordinary transactions or ancillary account actions.

In total, the “treasurers” who implement various approaches to the use of fees earned $558,294. The bulk of the sums was distributed among three providers, including Stackup.

Jesse Pollak, head of Coinbase Protocols and lead developer of the L2 network Base, disagreed with Rising’s arguments, stating that the adoption of the new technology would happen ‘slowly, and then suddenly’.

fwiw, this doesn’t feel sobering to me — just seems very early. growth seems to be healthy, standardization seems to be happening, more and more teams i’m talking to are making the jump.

slowly, then suddenly 🙂https://t.co/F7sU4xUqbD

— Jesse Pollak (jesse.xyz) ?️ (@jessepollak) November 13, 2023

“It just feels very early. Growth looks healthy, standardization is progressing. More and more teams I’m talking to are digging into [smart accounts],” he added.

According to the Dune dashboard, August was a record month for AA-wallet activity — over 420,000 addresses across seven blockchains.

However, in subsequent months the metric began to decline and by October it had fallen to 143,000.

In May, Visa specialists showed interest in using the account-abstraction technology to simplify payments.

Subsequently, Safeинтегрировала ERC-4337 into the AA stack for Safe{Core} developers, version 1.4.1.