Ethereum: Payment giant shifts focus to ERC-4337 and this means…

In line with its goal to simplify crypto payments, Visa tried account abstraction on the Ethereum Goerli Testnet.

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  • Payment company Visa continues to explore processing transactions on the Ethereum blockchain.
  • Traction on the network remains low.

Supporting Ethereum’s [ETH] causes is something Visa seems committed to. In another round of updates, the leading payment service provider displayed that it has been closely monitoring the blockchain’s ERC-4337, and focused on how it could help foster account abstraction. 


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Looking to put ERC-4337 on the map

Developed recently, ERC-4337 allows users to automate transactions on the Ethereum blockchain with no consensus layer altercation. Besides that, the account abstraction feature on the standard enables decentralized multi-factor control and security. 

Visa’s interest in ERC-4337 stems from its goal of expanding its presence in the digital asset and blockchain ecosystem. 

By monitoring Ethereum’s evolving standard, the firm noted that the deployment of ERC-4337 on the Ethereum Mainnet could be advantageous for the project’s compatibility with any blockchains. 

This was not Visa’s first interaction with Ethereum. Since switching to Proof-of-Stake (PoS), Ethereum has been on Visa’s radar.

In December 2022, the firm proposed automatic payments

for its users via StarkNet, Ethereum’s L2 solution in the developmental phase. 

Now, its latest crypto thought leadership post opined that ERC-4337 could provide an end-to-end transaction flow for its users via a mempool.  

For the unfamiliar, a mempool is a blockchain node responsible for verifying and approving queued or pending transactions. In explaining the process, Visa noted that, 

“​​Users generate UserOperations through ERC-4337-compliant smart contract wallets. UserOperations encapsulate the user’s intent to interact with the blockchain.”

Although there were still some complexities with the blockchain standard, the payment firm deployed and processed an experimental transaction on it. While the test was termed successful, Ethereum developers had once mentioned that the functionality and security were still being worked on.

Growth is withering 

Meanwhile, Ethereum’s development activity had recovered from a slight decrease. The metric, which measures the public GitHub contribution to the blockchain, was 50.38 at press time.

This means that developers had returned to committing codes dedicated to ensuring Ethereum’s functionality. While Visa’s experiment was aimed at increasing ETH users, the yield has not yet been reflected.

Source: Santiment


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As of 18 May, the network growth had reduced to 17,200. The metric reflects the number of new addresses interacting with a blockchain network. Therefore, the decline means that Ethereum had significantly lost traction, and new addresses had restrained from making transactions on the network. 

Lastly, Visa admitted that Ethereum not fully supporting account abstraction could be a hindrance to its objectives. However, it mentioned that StarkNet’s developmental model has the potential to make up for the drawback.