Author: Stacy Muur Translation: Shan Ouba, Golden Finance
ERC-4337 wallets exploded in 30 days, with over 2 million gas-free transactions. While this growth is impressive, most of the transactions were driven by bots and one-off minting activities. So, what is the actual status of gas-free applications?
In just 30 days, 89 projects covered 9 blockchains and processed more than 2 million gas-free transactions, saving $117,000 in gas fees.
This wave of gas-free transactions shows that ERC-4337 smart wallets with Paymaster covering fees can quickly increase on-chain activity.
A rise in transaction volume does not necessarily mean active user interest, especially when a small number of wallets (traders, robots) repeatedly execute contract calls.
Airdrops, free minting, claiming rewards and other activities can trigger the creation of a large number of new wallets in a short period of time, but these wallets often only execute a transaction once and then stop being active.
Many projects saw a surge in new wallets in the NFT, gaming, and token sectors, but many of them were only used for single minting or claiming rewards and did not form long-term user retention.
On the other hand, a small number of applications exhibited deeper, repeated use, which was often driven by more engaging game loops, repeated DeFi operations, or infrastructure-level services.
These findings demonstrate how ERC-4337 smart wallets are reshaping on-chain activity, highlighting the power of gas sponsorship to attract users and the need for compelling, reusable applications to keep users engaged.
• 89 independent applications/protocols
• About 724,000 active smart wallets
• About $117,000 in Gas fees are abstracted
• About 2,087,799 free Gas Transactions
The rapid growth of gas-free transactions is part of a larger trend. In 2024, ERC-4337 accounts performed more than 103 million user operations (UserOps), more than 10 times the number in 2023 (8.3 million). 87% of these transactions were funded by Paymaster, achieving a gas-free experience.
From the Paymaster monthly gas fee expenditure chart, we can observe an interesting evolution path:
• Early Adoption (2023): Before mid-2023, expenditures are almost zero, and Optimism is the first to adopt
• Growth Phase (H2 2023): Transaction volume steadily increases, reaching $400,000/month in October 2023
• Peak Activity Period (April 2024): Transaction volume surges to $700,000, mainly driven by Base
• Recent Trends (End 2024 - 2025 $630,000 in November-December 2024), but spending drops sharply in early 2025, falling to around $150,000 in February 2025
To date, apps and users have spent over $3.4M on UserOp fees through Paymasters, with Biconomy, Pimlico, Coinbase and Alchemy being the main providers.
Despite the market correction, the main spending in Q1 2025 was still contributed by Base ($391,117), Ethereum ($121,053) and BNB Chain (about $112,493).
• Base (43.2%): Entertainment and social hub, dominated by Gaming (76.8%)
• Polygon (21.4%): Community interaction layer, mainly used for NFTs (50.7%) and Telegram wallets (42.3%)
• Optimism (8.5%): Security-focused, with an emphasis on recovery infrastructure
• Celo (7.4%): Focused on niche markets, such as prediction markets
• BSC (4.2%): Value transfer layer, focused on token transactions, with the highest gas fees
Tx/Wallet (Transactions per wallet)
This measures the average number of transactions completed per wallet. A lower number (e.g. ~1.0) indicates one-time use, such as minting NFTs or claiming airdrops. A higher number (e.g. ~25) indicates repeated participation, such as active trading, gaming, or bots.
Cost/Tx (Cost per transaction)
In a gasless system, this represents the abstract cost of each transaction, rather than the gas fee paid directly by the user.
1. NFT projects: large number of wallets = disposable accounts
• Piggybox: ~1 tx/wallet, ~$0.004/tx
• Somon Badge: ~1.4 tx/wallet, ~$0.007/tx
Interpretation: 1:1 matching of wallets and transactions (such as Piggybox) strongly suggests that it is a minting or airdrop activity. Piggybox is an NFT in the EARN’M ecosystem. Users will receive a Piggybox NFT when they register and have the opportunity to obtain EARNM tokens.
One-time use surge: Many wallets only perform one transaction (minting/claiming) and then are no longer used, so the wallet/transaction ratio is close to 1:1.
Ranking data distortion: Piggybox ranks high due to its large number of wallets, but if one-time wallets are excluded, its ranking may drop sharply and retention is low.
2. Token transactions: Trading volume is concentrated in a few projects
Total token transactions (868k+) At first glance, it seems to dominate, however, there are as many as 26 token projects involved, far more than other categories. But $BVRP and $USDC tokens contributed 667k+ transactions, accounting for the majority of the trading volume.
• $BVRP: ~25 tx/wallet, $0.012/tx
• $USDC: ~4.6 tx/wallet，$0.21/tx
Interpretation:
This concentration suggests that not all "token" projects are equally active, but rather a small number of heavyweight projects are driving up the total volume.
$BVRP's trading activity is high relative to the number of wallets. This suggests that these platforms have high user engagement, frequent automatic or repeated transactions
3. Gaming: A “hit” game, but the wallet/transaction ratio is worth investigating
• SuperChamps: ~1.49 tx/wallet, ~$0.017/tx
• BLOCKLORDS: ~42 tx/wallet, ~$0.009/tx
• Miracleplay: ~14 tx/wallet, ~$0.012/tx
Interpretation:
• SuperChamps is far ahead in total transaction volume (463k transactions, far exceeding the 13k transactions of other games combined), but each wallet only performed 1-2 transactions on average, indicating that players mostly performed one-time operations, such as claiming airdrops or novice rewards, and had a low long-term retention rate.
• BLOCKLORDS has a small number of wallets, but each wallet performs 42 transactions on average, indicating a highly active player base and possible bot activity. As David Johansson of BLOCKLORDS said, “they are fighting bots” (likely hinting at high levels of automation in the game).
4. Bridges & Plugins: Stable usage but high gas fees
• UniversalX: ~4.4 tx/wallet, ~$0.55/tx
• Safe4337Module: ~5.1 tx/wallet, ~$0.053/tx
Interpretation:
• Behind-the-scenes infrastructure: Bridges and plugins don’t top the transaction volume charts like tokens or games, but since many dApps rely on these tools, their usage remains stable.
• Ecosystem health indicators: Steady infrastructure usage represents actual application demand, not short-term hype-driven spikes.
5. The professionalization trend of the chain is taking shape
• Base: 99.5% of game wallet activities (310,934 game wallets, 312,361 in total)
• Polygon: Dominant NFT/Social (87% of NFT wallets in the ecosystem)
• BNB Chain: High-value bridge transactions lead (23.2% of gas fee abstracted transactions)
• Celo: Strong prediction market performance (25,574 wallets, 12.7 tx/wallet)
6. Significant cross-chain gas fee differences
Gas fees on different chains vary greatly, causing application categories to skew towards specific chains:
Ethereum: $2.41 per gas-free transaction (highest)
BSC: $2.11 per gas-free transaction $0.50
Base: $0.02 per gasless transaction (lowest among major chains)
Polygon: $0.03 per gasless transaction
Conclusion: 100x difference in cross-chain cost structure will drive specific application categories to specific chains regardless of technical similarity. Games and social applications are not economically viable on high-cost chains.
1. NFT adoption can show tens of thousands of user wallets minted only once (e.g. Piggybox), but extended usage is extremely low.
2. Infrastructure (bridges, plugins) have a stable medium transaction volume, usually with a high per-transaction cost (bridges) or stable background usage (plugins).
3. The difference in the number of wallet transactions between categories highlights different usage patterns: some applications are used frequently, while others are only one-off operations.
4. Finally, a large number of projects have little user participation, indicating that simply offering gas-free transactions is not enough to attract users, and dApps need a real value proposition to retain users.
Account abstraction and gas sponsorship can indeed increase transaction volume and user registrations, but the real test lies in the continued engagement of users.
Combining the data of wallet number, abstracted gas volume and gas-free transaction volume, the usage of each category is concentrated in a few star dApps or driven by large-scale one-time claiming activities. Projects like Piggybox have made NFT projects top the list with a nearly 1:1 wallet/transaction ratio, but their ranking drops significantly after removing one-time accounts. Bridge and plugin solutions have more stable medium-term transaction volumes, reflecting real ecosystem demand rather than short-term market hype.
All these trends - gas-freegaming, seamless DeFi experience, blockchain specialization, are driven by ERC-4337 Smart Wallet.
Unlike traditional EOA (Externally Owned Accounts), ERC-4337 Smart Wallet does not require users to manage private keys or manually sign each transaction, but provides automation, security and flexibility, greatly improving the user experience.
A smart contract wallet (or smart wallet) is a programmable Ethereum account with the following features:
Batch transactions – users can combine multiple operations (such as approve + redeem) into a single transaction.
Gas fee abstraction – Users do not need to hold ETH to pay for Gas fees, fees can be paid by sponsors or paid with other tokens.
Security without mnemonics – Users can authenticate through Passkey, social recovery or multi-factor authentication to avoid the risk of losing private keys.
When a user initiates a transaction, a Paymaster (a special smart contract) can pay the Gas fee on their behalf, or allow users to pay Gas with any ERC-20 token, thereby lowering the entry barrier to Web3 and making the blockchain application experience as smooth as Web2.
However, ERC-4337 still faces significant challenges, which may be the root cause of the low user retention rate:
High technical threshold – Complex components (UserOperations, Bundlers, EntryPoint contracts) increase the learning cost for developers and ordinary users.
Cost issues – Gas-free transactions reduce user costs, but implementing ERC-4337 requires expensive infrastructure, especially when Gas fees fluctuate, Bundler's profitability will be affected.
Reliability issues – Network congestion may cause transaction delays, and complex verification logic may bring security risks.
User experience defects – Multi-chain ecosystem fragmentation leads to inconsistent wallet experience and difficult cross-chain management.
Although account abstraction & Gas sponsorship has increased transaction volume and user registration, the core challenge remains user retention.
Data shows:
• Many dApps only have one-time usage peaks (such as NFT minting, airdrops), rather than long-term user retention.
• Only a few projects dominate the majority of activity, while most projects still struggle to gain real user demand.
• Bridge & infrastructure applications are more stable, showing real usage rather than short-term hype.
While ERC-4337 enables gasless transactions and improves user experience, its complexity and cost barriers limit mainstream adoption. EIP-7702 addresses these gaps by:
Enabling EOA for Account Abstraction: The core problem with ERC-4337 is that it excludes EOA, requiring users to switch to smart contract wallets. EIP-7702 solves this problem by allowing EOAs to temporarily adopt smart contract code, allowing for features like gas sponsorship (paying fees with ERC-20 tokens) and transaction batching (e.g., approving and spending ERC-20 tokens in a single transaction). For example, users can now batch ERC-20 approvals and then spends, a common DEX workflow, without the need for a smart contract wallet.
As the community post points out, this is particularly beneficial for users who love EOA and find it too cumbersome to migrate their assets to a new account.
Simplify Complexity and Cost:Allowing EOAs to temporarily adopt smart contract functionality reduces the need for permanent wallet contracts and cuts gas costs, reducing reliance on EntryPoint or bundlers.
Improve efficiency:Introducing transaction type 0x04 for batch EOA operations, providing a leaner alternative to ERC-4337’s UserOps.
Streamline infrastructure:Limit smart contract code to transaction execution, minimizing reliance on alt mempools and bundlers for basic use cases.
Empower developers:Integrate with ERC-4337 while providing a flexible, low-friction upgrade path.
ERC-4337 laid the foundation for account abstraction, but EIP-7702 makes smart wallets cheaper, simpler, and easier to use, accelerating the next wave of Web3 adoption.
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