March 2023 marked a significant milestone in the world of Web3 and Blockchain with the implementation of the new account abstraction standard — ERC-4337 — in Ethereum, without needing to modify the consensus layer of the network. This maintains the system’s stability and security.
The ERC-4337 standard allows developers to consolidate a diverse range of digital assets under a single smart contract. This unifying capability means that various types of assets, including NFTs, fungible tokens like ethers and stablecoins, as well as other digital assets, can be housed in a single address, enabling more efficient and centralized management.
Furthermore, ERC-4337 paves the way for a new generation of user-friendly cryptographic wallets like Human Wallet. These wallets, leveraging the technical capabilities of ERC-4337, offer a much simpler and more user-friendly experience.
By abstracting technical details of accounts, ERC-4337 allows even less technical users to interact more simply with decentralized applications (dApps). This is crucial for the mass adoption of blockchain technology, as it removes many of the technical and security barriers that prevent new users from adopting it.
Advantages of Account Abstraction for Web3 Branding
Increased Personalization
- Unique accounts for each brand: With ERC-4337, brands can create accounts with customized features and rules, allowing a unique representation of the brand’s identity on Ethereum.
- Customized user experience: Brands can also design specific interactions with users, enhancing customer experience and reinforcing brand identity and personality.
Increased Security
- Trust: By implementing advanced security measures in their accounts, brands can further increase user-perceived trust.
- Brand protection: The ability to incorporate customized logic and security measures in accounts will help protect the brand against potential fraud and misuse.
Innovation in Marketing
- Loyalty programs: Brands can use customized accounts to create and implement innovative loyalty programs, using tokens and smart contracts to reward and recognize their customers, thus reinforcing their loyalty.
- Targeted marketing campaigns: The flexibility in managing transactions allows brands to create unique marketing campaigns and promotions directly on the blockchain.
Improved Integration of dApps
- Expanded brand ecosystem: Brands can more easily integrate with various decentralized applications — dApps — expanding their presence and services in the Web3 ecosystem.
- Collaborations: Account abstraction facilitates collaborations between brands, allowing for more complex and effective integrations and synergies.
Improved UX (Ease of Use)
Simplified access for users: Reducing the dependence on private keys and simplifying transactions make it easier for users to interact with the brand.
Mainstream adoption: By making blockchain interactions more accessible, brands can attract a broader audience.
Reduced Costs (Gas Fees)
Gas (the cost of energy for using the network) in Ethereum has been a headache and one of the brakes on its use and adoption. Until now, gas could only be paid with ETH crypto, complicating transactions when only other tokens like USDC are owned.
Smart contract wallets solve this by allowing gas to be paid with USDC, eliminating the need to keep ETH in all accounts.
Additionally, account abstraction offers dApp developers more flexibility in managing gas, such as charging fixed monthly fees for unlimited transactions or covering gas costs as an incentive for users.
Here’s a video of Vitalik Buterin himself talking about account abstraction.
The speculation and scandals of 2022 did much damage to the reputation of the Web3 space. Moreover, this 2023 that we now say goodbye to has been the year of AI in terms of democratization and massive use of that technology and its media impact; it has been the term of the year on everyone’s lips.
Does this mean that blockchain technology is dead? Not at all, its infrastructure has been developing to advance in trust and ease of use. And this is the case with account abstraction.
It is better to keep building and testing the technology. And if it is in silence, or with the least noise, the better; and this is what enthusiasts of this new space have continued doing.
Moreover, we cannot talk about technologies in isolation, but about the convergence between them. And in our case, Web3 converges with AI, IoT, and also with extended reality technologies that bring us a 3D internet.
What possibilities for evolving the way of branding does this technological convergence bring us? Endless, so I invite you to stay tuned, to get to know them, to try them even at the risk of making mistakes.
Exploring, discovering, transcending the passion for learning and contributing to creating new markets and branding categories is the most satisfying thing one can experience professionally.
I wish you all the best for the new year.
Keep going.
By Ángel González
Ideagoras
