Ethereum: ERC 4337 is Coming, Significant Advantage for EVM Rollups

There’s something new with Ethereum. In due time, the account abstraction related to rollups on the world’s most popular blockchain will become effective. Let’s dive in !

The Ethereum Foundation wants to revise the concept of rollups

Decongesting Ethereum is the goal of the promoters of the layer 2 zkRollup technology which is behind Loopring (LRC), Hermez (HEZ), and ZKSync. Among all the existing solutions (or those under construction), Loopring would arrive with almost non-existent gas fees: 0.25% for the swap. That’s about a 90% reduction compared to ETH transaction fees on layer 1s.

Even Hermez Network by Polygon doesn’t compete with Loopring on this point.

Let 'er RIP! ✨

Native Account Abstraction for rollups standardization that is https://t.co/hR0MU6inuh

— erc4337 (@erc4337) November 18, 2023

Based on the tweet by Alexander Forshat, a developer at the Ethereum Foundation, U°Today highlighted the imminent arrival of ERC 4337 at the level of Ethereum Virtual Machine rollups. For now, it is just a simple proposal. However, once effective, this account abstraction will facilitate the blurring of the line between accounts on Ethereum and smart contracts.

The title of Alexander Forshat’s proposal is: “Roadmap for Native Account Abstraction Introduction” (or Roadmap for the introduction of native account abstraction). It also goes by another name, “RIP-7560: Native Account Abstraction”.

The goal of this proposal is to make use, for the first time, of the concept of AA in the ecosystem of rollups. Using it would facilitate the integration of second-layer scaling solutions for Ethereum, the issuer of ETH cryptocurrency. And at the same time, it would endow on-chain Ethereum wallets with smart contract functionality.

Conditions to be respected

Once AA is enabled in EVM rollups, both L1 and L2 of Ethereum will have similar AA designs conducive to a “seamless ecosystem”. But before we get there, these changes will need to be made within smart contract accounts:

• adjusting the entry point address ;
• rewriting the validateUserOP function ;
• developing transaction logics.

Additionally, some tweaks will be needed in the adjustment of Paymaster operations and the signature aggregation process.

This has sparked the interest of Ethereum enthusiasts, who have not hesitated to leave comments in the GitHub repository of the famous proposal. Alexander Forshat remains very optimistic about his proposal.

“We believe that standardization and network effect are essential to the success of any account abstraction initiative, which is why we invite everyone to participate in creating the standard for native account abstraction that can be adopted by all layer 2 and layer 1 networks,” he said.

Note that from a developmental perspective, the Ethereum developers have recently distinguished between Ethereum Research Concepts (ERC) and Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIP).