A Comprehensive Guide to ERC-4337: Understanding Account Abstraction in Ethereum

Paulina Lewandowska

28 Mar 2023
A Comprehensive Guide to ERC-4337: Understanding Account Abstraction in Ethereum

If you're involved in the world of blockchain and cryptocurrencies, you've probably heard of Ethereum, one of the most popular platforms for developing decentralized applications. Ethereum has been around for a few years now, and while it has been successful in many ways, there are still some limitations to the way it currently operates. That's where ERC-4337 comes in – a proposed Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) that aims to introduce a new feature called "account abstraction" to the Ethereum blockchain. In this article, we'll take a closer look at what ERC-4337 is, how it works, and what it means for users.

Definition of ERC-4337

ERC-4337 is a proposed EIP that aims to introduce account abstraction to the Ethereum blockchain. This would allow smart contracts to directly receive and send funds without the need for an intermediary account.

Overview of Ethereum and its limitations

Before we dive into account abstraction, let's first understand Ethereum and its limitations:

  • Ethereum is a blockchain platform that enables developers to build and deploy decentralized applications, or dApps, on top of it.
  • Ethereum uses a native cryptocurrency called Ether (ETH) to incentivize miners to process transactions and secure the network.
  • Ethereum has some limitations, such as scalability, privacy, and security, that need to be addressed to make it more usable and accessible.

What is Account Abstraction?

Under the current account-based model used in Ethereum, smart contracts cannot directly receive or send funds. Instead, they rely on an intermediary account to execute transactions. Account abstraction, on the other hand, allows smart contracts to have their own unique address, enabling them to directly receive and send funds without an intermediary account. This would enable more complex smart contract interactions and make Ethereum more flexible.

What does ERC-4337 actually mean to you?

If you're looking for a more streamlined and user-friendly experience when it comes to interacting with decentralized apps (dApps) on the Ethereum network, then ERC-4337 might be just what you need. This new standard for contract accounts introduces several benefits that could make your life as a crypto user easier and more efficient.

  • Simplifying Wallet Access: You'll appreciate the simplification of wallet access and logins. With ERC-4337, you won't need to deal with cumbersome private keys or seed phrases when logging in to your wallet. Instead, you can use your Ethereum address as your login ID, making the process much more user-friendly.
  • Recovery Options: You'll have enhanced recovery options in case you lose access to your account. Unlike with traditional Ethereum accounts, ERC-4337 allows you to add recovery addresses to your contract account, giving you more flexibility and security in the event of a lost password or stolen device.
  • Sponsoring Gas Fees:You'll enjoy the option of having your gas fees sponsored, which could save you a significant amount of money in the long run. With ERC-4337, you won't need to worry about paying for gas fees yourself, as a third party can cover them for you in exchange for a small fee.

Benefits of ERC-4337

BenefitsExplanations
Improved user experienceWith account abstraction, users would no longer need to hold and manage multiple accounts for different dApps. Smart contracts would be able to handle their own transactions, simplifying the user experience and making it easier to interact with dApps.
Increased securitySmart contracts would be able to act as account addresses, reducing the risk of hacks and attacks on externally owned accounts, which are currently the only accounts that can initiate transactions in Ethereum. This would enhance the security of the network and protect users' funds.
Easier onboarding for new developersAccount abstraction would make it easier for new developers to build and deploy dApps on Ethereum, as they would no longer need to learn the intricacies of externally owned accounts and gas fees. This would encourage more developers to build on Ethereum and increase the overall growth of the ecosystem.
Interoperability with other blockchainsAccount abstraction would enable Ethereum to be more interoperable with other blockchains that support smart contracts. This would allow for cross-chain interactions and enable developers to build dApps that leverage the strengths of multiple blockchains.

Drawbacks of ERC-4337

Although ERC-4337 offers considerable advantages, adopting it comes with certain risks. First, the added flexibility of this new standard could potentially be exploited. Moreover, compatibility problems with current wallets and applications, along with the necessity for users to trust third parties for their transactions, might present significant challenges. Furthermore, implementing ERC-4337 could demand substantial infrastructure and technical expertise, possibly raising centralization concerns. Lastly, the high expenses of the Ethereum network and the requirement for contract verification may further hinder the adoption of this standard. It is vital that users and developers remain vigilant and conscious of these potential risks while considering the implementation of ERC-4337.

Conclusion

To conclude, ERC-4337 represents a suggested Ethereum Improvement Proposal that incorporates account abstraction into the Ethereum blockchain. This enables smart contracts to directly send and receive funds without requiring an intermediary account. The new feature has the potential to streamline user experience, enhance security, and facilitate the development and deployment of dApps on Ethereum for new developers.

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AI in Real Estate: How Does It Support the Housing Market?

Miłosz Mach

18 Mar 2025
AI in Real Estate: How Does It Support the Housing Market?

The digital transformation is reshaping numerous sectors of the economy, and real estate is no exception. By 2025, AI will no longer be a mere gadget but a powerful tool that facilitates customer interactions, streamlines decision-making processes, and optimizes sales operations. Simultaneously, blockchain technology ensures security, transparency, and scalability in transactions. With this article, we launch a series of publications exploring AI in business, focusing today on the application of artificial intelligence within the real estate industry.

AI vs. Tradition: Key Implementations of AI in Real Estate

Designing, selling, and managing properties—traditional methods are increasingly giving way to data-driven decision-making.

Breakthroughs in Customer Service

AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants are revolutionizing how companies interact with their customers. These tools handle hundreds of inquiries simultaneously, personalize offers, and guide clients through the purchasing process. Implementing AI agents can lead to higher-quality leads for developers and automate responses to most standard customer queries. However, technical challenges in deploying such systems include:

  • Integration with existing real estate databases: Chatbots must have access to up-to-date listings, prices, and availability.
  • Personalization of communication: Systems must adapt their interactions to individual customer needs.
  • Management of industry-specific knowledge: Chatbots require specialized expertise about local real estate markets.

Advanced Data Analysis

Cognitive AI systems utilize deep learning to analyze complex relationships within the real estate market, such as macroeconomic trends, local zoning plans, and user behavior on social media platforms. Deploying such solutions necessitates:

  • Collecting high-quality historical data.
  • Building infrastructure for real-time data processing.
  • Developing appropriate machine learning models.
  • Continuously monitoring and updating models based on new data.

Intelligent Design

Generative artificial intelligence is revolutionizing architectural design. These advanced algorithms can produce dozens of building design variants that account for site constraints, legal requirements, energy efficiency considerations, and aesthetic preferences.

Optimizing Building Energy Efficiency

Smart building management systems (BMS) leverage AI to optimize energy consumption while maintaining resident comfort. Reinforcement learning algorithms analyze data from temperature, humidity, and air quality sensors to adjust heating, cooling, and ventilation parameters effectively.

Integration of AI with Blockchain in Real Estate

The convergence of AI with blockchain technology opens up new possibilities for the real estate sector. Blockchain is a distributed database where information is stored in immutable "blocks." It ensures transaction security and data transparency while AI analyzes these data points to derive actionable insights. In practice, this means that ownership histories, all transactions, and property modifications are recorded in an unalterable format, with AI aiding in interpreting these records and informing decision-making processes.

AI has the potential to bring significant value to the real estate sector—estimated between $110 billion and $180 billion by experts at McKinsey & Company.

Key development directions over the coming years include:

  • Autonomous negotiation systems: AI agents equipped with game theory strategies capable of conducting complex negotiations.
  • AI in urban planning: Algorithms designed to plan city development and optimize spatial allocation.
  • Property tokenization: Leveraging blockchain technology to divide properties into digital tokens that enable fractional investment opportunities.

Conclusion

For companies today, the question is no longer "if" but "how" to implement AI to maximize benefits and enhance competitiveness. A strategic approach begins with identifying specific business challenges followed by selecting appropriate technologies.

What values could AI potentially bring to your organization?
  • Reduction of operational costs through automation
  • Enhanced customer experience and shorter transaction times
  • Increased accuracy in forecasts and valuations, minimizing business risks
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Want to implement AI in your real estate business?

Nextrope specializes in implementing AI and blockchain solutions tailored to specific business needs. Our expertise allows us to:

  • Create intelligent chatbots that serve customers 24/7
  • Implement analytical systems for property valuation
  • Build secure blockchain solutions for real estate transactions
Schedule a free consultation

Or check out other articles from the "AI in Business" series

AI-Driven Frontend Automation: Elevating Developer Productivity to New Heights

Gracjan Prusik

11 Mar 2025
AI-Driven Frontend Automation: Elevating Developer Productivity to New Heights

AI Revolution in the Frontend Developer's Workshop

In today's world, programming without AI support means giving up a powerful tool that radically increases a developer's productivity and efficiency. For the modern developer, AI in frontend automation is not just a curiosity, but a key tool that enhances productivity. From automatically generating components, to refactoring, and testing – AI tools are fundamentally changing our daily work, allowing us to focus on the creative aspects of programming instead of the tedious task of writing repetitive code. In this article, I will show how these tools are most commonly used to work faster, smarter, and with greater satisfaction.

This post kicks off a series dedicated to the use of AI in frontend automation, where we will analyze and discuss specific tools, techniques, and practical use cases of AI that help developers in their everyday tasks.

AI in Frontend Automation – How It Helps with Code Refactoring

One of the most common uses of AI is improving code quality and finding errors. These tools can analyze code and suggest optimizations. As a result, we will be able to write code much faster and significantly reduce the risk of human error.

How AI Saves Us from Frustrating Bugs

Imagine this situation: you spend hours debugging an application, not understanding why data isn't being fetched. Everything seems correct, the syntax is fine, yet something isn't working. Often, the problem lies in small details that are hard to catch when reviewing the code.

Let’s take a look at an example:

function fetchData() {
    fetch("htts://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts")
      .then((response) => response.json())
      .then((data) => console.log(data))
      .catch((error) => console.error(error));
}

At first glance, the code looks correct. However, upon running it, no data is retrieved. Why? There’s a typo in the URL – "htts" instead of "https." This is a classic example of an error that could cost a developer hours of frustrating debugging.

When we ask AI to refactor this code, not only will we receive a more readable version using newer patterns (async/await), but also – and most importantly – AI will automatically detect and fix the typo in the URL:

async function fetchPosts() {
    try {
      const response = await fetch(
        "https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts"
      );
      const data = await response.json();
      console.log(data);
    } catch (error) {
      console.error(error);
    }
}

How AI in Frontend Automation Speeds Up UI Creation

One of the most obvious applications of AI in frontend development is generating UI components. Tools like GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT, or Claude can generate component code based on a short description or an image provided to them.

With these tools, we can create complex user interfaces in just a few seconds. Generating a complete, functional UI component often takes less than a minute. Furthermore, the generated code is typically error-free, includes appropriate animations, and is fully responsive, adapting to different screen sizes. It is important to describe exactly what we expect.

Here’s a view generated by Claude after entering the request: “Based on the loaded data, display posts. The page should be responsive. The main colors are: #CCFF89, #151515, and #E4E4E4.”

Generated posts view

AI in Code Analysis and Understanding

AI can analyze existing code and help understand it, which is particularly useful in large, complex projects or code written by someone else.

Example: Generating a summary of a function's behavior

Let’s assume we have a function for processing user data, the workings of which we don’t understand at first glance. AI can analyze the code and generate a readable explanation:

function processUserData(users) {
  return users
    .filter(user => user.isActive) // Checks the `isActive` value for each user and keeps only the objects where `isActive` is true
    .map(user => ({ 
      id: user.id, // Retrieves the `id` value from each user object
      name: `${user.firstName} ${user.lastName}`, // Creates a new string by combining `firstName` and `lastName`
      email: user.email.toLowerCase(), // Converts the email address to lowercase
    }));
}

In this case, AI not only summarizes the code's functionality but also breaks down individual operations into easier-to-understand segments.

AI in Frontend Automation – Translations and Error Detection

Every frontend developer knows that programming isn’t just about creatively building interfaces—it also involves many repetitive, tedious tasks. One of these is implementing translations for multilingual applications (i18n). Adding translations for each key in JSON files and then verifying them can be time-consuming and error-prone.

However, AI can significantly speed up this process. Using ChatGPT, DeepSeek, or Claude allows for automatic generation of translations for the user interface, as well as detecting linguistic and stylistic errors.

Example:

We have a translation file in JSON format:

{
  "welcome_message": "Welcome to our application!",
  "logout_button": "Log out",
  "error_message": "Something went wrong. Please try again later."
}

AI can automatically generate its Polish version:

{
  "welcome_message": "Witaj w naszej aplikacji!",
  "logout_button": "Wyloguj się",
  "error_message": "Coś poszło nie tak. Spróbuj ponownie później."
}

Moreover, AI can detect spelling errors or inconsistencies in translations. For example, if one part of the application uses "Log out" and another says "Exit," AI can suggest unifying the terminology.

This type of automation not only saves time but also minimizes the risk of human errors. And this is just one example – AI also assists in generating documentation, writing tests, and optimizing performance, which we will discuss in upcoming articles.

Summary

Artificial intelligence is transforming the way frontend developers work daily. From generating components and refactoring code to detecting errors, automating testing, and documentation—AI significantly accelerates and streamlines the development process. Without these tools, we would lose a lot of valuable time, which we certainly want to avoid.

In the next parts of this series, we will cover topics such as:

Stay tuned to keep up with the latest insights!