Long Push An Analysis of ERC-4337 Market Use Cases based on Intentional Transactions

Analysis of ERC-4337 Market Use Cases Based on Intentional Transactions

Author: Arrow@go2mars, Source: Author’s Twitter @ArrowCrypto_eth

Today, let’s talk about ERC-4337 (Ethereum Account Abstraction) based on the intention transaction. In fact, in the previous article, we mentioned the role of account abstraction (Account Abstract) in the project Bob the Solver.

ERC-4337 Account Abstraction

ERC-4337 aims to achieve account abstraction without affecting decentralization and censorship resistance. Users can enjoy a single account with both smart contract and externally owned account (EOA) functionalities.

• Behind the Rush of Cryptocurrency Exchanges in Vietnam Over 16 Million Crypto Users with Trading Volume Higher than Singapore
• LianGuai Daily | Former Vice Chairman of Jiangxi Provincial Political Consultative Conference, Xiao Yi, sentenced to life imprisonment; Coinbase has invested in Circle.
• Looking back at the decentralized storage track that has been neglected by the market from EthStorage

This means that AA wallets can access smart contract wallets without relying on centralized relayers controlled by a single entity. Transactions and contract creations can be performed within a single contract account.

Account abstraction combines the functionalities of the existing two types of accounts, namely, ① Externally Owned Accounts (EOA) and ② Contract Accounts (CA), bringing smart contract functionalities to wallets in a single account. This makes future innovative wallet designs more feasible.

Let’s first understand the basics of these two types of accounts.

Ethereum accounts have four fields: {nonce, balance, codeHash, StorageRoot}, where:

① Nonce is a counter that shows the number of transactions sent by an external account or the number of contracts created by a contract account;

② Balance – the amount of Wei owned by the address;

③ CodeHash – the hash that represents the account code on the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). Contract accounts have programmable code snippets that can perform different operations. If the account receives a message call, this EVM code is executed. Unlike other account fields, it cannot be changed. All code snippets are stored under the corresponding hash in the state database for later retrieval;

④ StorageRoot – sometimes referred to as the storage hash.

And these two account types are:

① Externally Owned Accounts (EOA) – externally owned accounts controlled by anyone who possesses the private key, with an empty codeHash;

② Contract Accounts (CA) – accounts without private keys, with a non-empty codeHash.

The main differences between EOA and CA are:

Externally Owned Accounts (EOA): Account creation is free, can initiate transactions, and can only perform Ether and token transfers between externally owned accounts. It consists of a pair of cryptographic keys: a public key and a private key that control account activities.

Contract Accounts (CA): Creating a contract incurs a cost as it requires network storage space; can only send transactions when receiving transactions; transactions initiated from external accounts to contract accounts can trigger code that can perform various operations, such as transferring tokens or even creating new contracts; contract accounts do not have private keys and are controlled by the logic of the smart contract code.

Merging the two types of accounts in ERC-4337 brings smart contract functionalities to wallets in a single account, which opens up great possibilities for AA wallets.

Currently, most Ethereum wallets are externally owned accounts, and the most widely used one is the MetaMask wallet.

However, this type of external wallet is subject to the rules set by the external owning wallet, such as your account access relying entirely on private keys, and all transactions requiring signatures. If the mnemonic is lost, control over this wallet is lost as well.

Smart contract wallets managed by smart contract accounts can also achieve this functionality, bringing convenience. No longer needing a mnemonic phrase means there is no fear of losing it, achieving multi-factor authentication and account recovery. It also allows for various custom services.

Operation of ERC-4337

The account abstraction proposal completely avoids the need for changes to the consensus layer protocol. Similar concepts were proposed in EIP-2938, but changes to the consensus layer protocol were required. EIP-3074 also proposed the idea of delegating “EOA control to smart contracts”.

The ERC-4337 proposal does not add new protocol functionality or change the underlying transaction types, but introduces a higher-level pseudo-transaction object called UserOperation.

In the actual operation process, users send UserOperation objects to a new separate memory pool. Then, through a bundler, these objects are packed into a single transaction, which will be included in a block.

The proposal also introduces a payment mechanism where users can use any ERC-20 token (such as USDC) instead of ETH to pay for Gas fees, or allow third parties to fully support their Gas fees in a decentralized manner.

Intent transactions and ERC-4337

In ERC-4337, UserOperation acts as a “pseudo-transaction object” representing the user’s transaction intent. It can contain multiple instructions and additional data to execute smart contract calls initiated by smart contract accounts. With the promotion of ERC-4337, more and more intents will be adopted.

Let’s take a look at dappOS, which is currently very popular and is hailed as leading the “Intent-Centric” new narrative of Web3 operations protocol.

dappOS is a Web3 operations protocol designed to make dApps user-friendly like mobile applications. As the first Web3 unified runtime protocol, it creates a layer between users and encrypted infrastructure such as public chains and cross-chain bridges, allowing users to easily interact with dappOS and complete verification and execution in a decentralized world. DappOS includes the function of recovering accidentally deleted mnemonic phrases, allowing users to reset their accounts through other devices or even third-party KYC services.

Its solution consists of two main parts:

① dappOS Account: Users use a unified account based on account abstraction instead of external EOA accounts, making it possible to implement account recovery, batch processing transactions, automated execution, and other functions. The way of aggregating multi-chain wallets also makes it convenient for users to manage assets on different chains in a unified manner;

② dappOS Network: A decentralized network that helps users automatically execute wallet and cross-chain operations, completing the complex interaction process behind transactions.

Therefore, based on dappOS, it will be faster to build foolproof dapps in the future. For users, they only need to clarify their intentions and do not need to perform operations themselves. They only need to provide a signature to complete all operations.

We will continue to update Blocking; if you have any questions or suggestions, please contact us!