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Boop vs ERC-4337

Here's a short comparison of Boop and ERC-4337 strength and weaknesses.

Note: smart account transactions are called "boops" in the Boop stack, and "user operations" (or "user ops") in ERC-4337, but we use the term "transaction" here.

  • Latency
    • Simulation
      • Boop enables really low latency by enabling the submitter to set the fees and gas limits for transactions it sponsors itself, and for transactions sponsored by paymasters (who need to validate that these values are set adequately). For instance, this means that for signature validation, account owner don't need to set the fee values and gas limits.
      • ERC-4337 requires additional network calls and at least one additional network roundtrip to fetch these values.
    • Paymaster
      • Boop encourages the use of onchain paymasters to avoid an additional roundtrip to a signing paymaster service, whereas that is the standard for sponsoring paymasters in ERC-4337 — which is still capable of also handling fully onchain paymasters.
      • Boop enables submitters to sponsor transactions, whereas this is not possible for ERC-4337 bundlers. In practice, most apps using ERC-4337 pick a single provider for their bundler and paymasters. Sponsoring submitters save gas compared to using a paymaster.
  • Balance Fragmentation
    • Boop does not require users to stake with the entry point contracts to pay for transaction fees for non-sponsored transactions, whereas ERC-4337 does.
    • Both Boop and ERC-4337 require paymasters to stake with the entry point.
  • Complexity
  • Extensions
    • Boop has a well-specified and simple extension system.
    • ERC-4337 has two competing extension systems (ERC-7579, ERC-6900) the most popular of which (7579) is poorly specified, and has multiple incompatible vendor implementations.
  • Adoption
    • Boop just came out.
    • ERC-4337 is fairly widely adopted.
  • Audits
    • ERC-4337 contracts have been audited by OpenZeppelin.
    • Boop has not been audited yet.
  • Wallet Support
    • Wallet for support ERC-4337 is relatively spotty — Ambire as seemingly the only "real" wallet (i.e. not tied to single app) you can use, but things seem to be changing (starting with MetaMask).
    • The Happy Wallet is powered by Boop, but only runs on the HappyChain testnet today.
  • Gas Costs
    • Boop is marginally cheaper than most ERC-4337 contract implementations on a 1-1 basis. But see "Transaction Bundling" for extra considerations.
  • Transaction Bundling
    • ERC-4337 supports bundling transactions accross multiple accounts.
    • Boop contracts suports bundling transactions accross accounts too (it needs to special provisions to do this), however the submitter is not set up to support bundling.
    • Boop supports bundling transactions for the same account via the BatchCallExecutor extension.
    • When using bundling in ERC-4337 and no bundling in Boop, ERC-4337 will be marginally cheaper in terms of gas per transaction.
  • Griefing Protection
    • Boop offers less griefing protection than ERC-4337 — this is unavoidable to avoid user balance fragmentation (see above). In practice, permissioning account implementations solves the issues, and reputation heuristics are fine in low-fee environments.
    • ERC-4337 outlines a complex set of griefing protection measures in ERC-7562, but not all major bundlers implement them. They can't fully prevent griefing, but can offer more downside protection than possible with Boop.
  • Mempool
    • Boop does not ship mempool logic. It is less well-suited for an open mempool in particular because of griefing protection concerns. Setting up up a private mempool is not too complicated but not implemented.
    • One of ERC-4337's goal is the establishment of a fully open shared mempool, and this is implemented in a number of ERC-4337 bundlers — but it's almost impossible to find how to set it up without spelunking source code.
  • EIP-7702
    • ERC-4337 with EntryPoint v0.8 is fully compatible with EIP-7702.
    • Boop should in principle be fully compatible with EIP-7702, but this hasn't been verified via an actual deployment.
  • Account Deployment
    • In ERC-4337, accounts must be deployed by the EntryPoint, at the same time as the first transaction is made.
      • Account deployment factories must be staked with the EntryPoint.
    • In Boop, account deployment is not specified in-protocol. They can be deployed in advance, or at the same time as the first transaction via a multicall.
  • Explorer Support
    • Many block explorers support ERC-4337.
    • Boop does not yet have block explorer support but the BoopSubmitted event makes boop information visible in EVM event logs on existing block explorers.