ERC-4337, often known as “smart accounts,” was introduced by Ethereum developer Yoav Weiss on March 1 at WalletCon in Denver, Colorado.
Account abstraction is another name for ERC-4337 (formerly EIP-4337). It serves as the foundation for many functionality, including group-access wallets and account recovery.
Bundled and sponsored transactions with lower transaction fees are some more potential applications. Additionally, it will enable platforms to offer crypto services without requiring customers to create a conventional wallet and physically store their private key or seed phrase.
Account abstraction is just as secure as a self-custodied cryptocurrency wallet since it saves keys locally on the user’s hardware security module (HSM), not with any service provider.
Using the use of a smart contract, ERC-4337 was added to Ethereum without forking the entire network. On February 28, some hours before the feature was formally disclosed, the pertinent smart contract was deployed.
Any EVM-compatible blockchain, such as BNB Smart Chain (BNB), Polygon (MATIC), Avalanche (AVAX), and many others, can introduce the feature as well.
Notably, Visa approved ERC-4337 in December. Account abstraction was acknowledged by the corporation as a potential method for consumers to automatically schedule bitcoin payments.
There are also ongoing changes to Ethereum that are more substantial. The Shanghai upgrade of the blockchain will enable validators to withdraw staked ETH. The testnet for that functionality was turned on this week, and it should go live in full later this month.