An Introductory Study on the Power Consumption Overhead of ERC-4337 Bundlers

TL;DR

This study investigates the additional power consumption overhead introduced by ERC-4337 bundlers in Ethereum, using empirical measurements to understand their energy impact on blockchain services.

Contribution

It provides the first empirical analysis of power consumption overhead caused by ERC-4337 bundlers in Ethereum networks.

Findings

Bundlers have served over 500 million requests in two years.

Empirical data shows correlation between bundler workload and power consumption.

Power overhead of bundlers is measurable using RAPL hardware interfaces.

Abstract

Ethereum is currently the main blockchain ecosystem providing decentralised trust guarantees for applications ranging from finance to e-government. A common criticism of blockchain networks has been their energy consumption and operational costs. The switch from Proof-of-Work (PoW) protocol to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) protocol has significantly reduced this issue, though concerns remain, especially with network expansions via additional layers. The ERC-4337 standard is a recent proposal that facilitates end-user access to Ethereum-backed applications. It introduces a middleware called a bundler, operated as a third-party service, where part of its operational cost is represented by its power consumption. While bundlers have served over 500 million requests in the past two years, fewer than 15 official bundler providers exist, compared to over 100 regular Ethereum access providers. In this paper, we provide a first look at the active power consumption overhead that a bundler would add to an Ethereum access service. Using SmartWatts, a monitoring system leveraging Running Average Power Limit (RAPL) hardware interfaces, we empirically determine correlations between the bundler workload and its active power consumption.