Metropolis Makes It Easy To Deploy Smart Contracts Using Alchemy's Account Abstraction Infrastructure

Metropolis is on a mission to redefine smart contract deployment with Metal, a cutting-edge smart contract deployment and distribution platform. Since launching at EthDenver in late February, Metal has saved developers thousands of dollars in deployment fees.

Revolutionizing deployment tools for smart contract developers

Metropolis recognizes the challenges faced by developers: lack of standardization in deployment processes, complexity of managing and funding deployment accounts, and a need for user-friendly frontends for protocol interaction. Metal simplifies smart contract deployment with its intuitive tools, offering users seamless deployment experiences, including:

1. One-click Deployments: Instantly configure and deploy contracts to any network with a single-click.
2. Contract Library: Easily manage projects across networks and discover existing Metal projects to redeploy or build on top of.
3. Sponsored deployments: Metropolis sponsors contract deployments on Base, relieving developers of the burden of funding deployment accounts.

How are they doing it?

This radically simple deployment workflow is made possible by ERC-4337 Account Abstraction, a standard that unlocks the ability to design new web3 user experiences including frictionless onboarding, gas sponsorship, transaction batching, and account automation.

Two core components of Account Abstraction are bundlers and paymasters.

The bundler’s purpose is to get UserOps to be included onchain. Bundler is a critical piece of the infrastructure; if the bundler goes down, users cannot transact. Alchemy’s Bundler APIs ensure seamless smart contract deployments by enabling Metal to send UserOps on behalf of its users all while providing best in-class reliability, scalability, and performance. The result? 350+ deployments since its launch.

Paymasters are smart contracts that enable flexible gas policies like allowing dapps to sponsor userOps or users to pay for gas in any ERC-20 token. Alchemy’s Gas Manager APIs, a managed service for ERC-4337 paymasters, empower Metal to subsidize gas fees for users, eliminating the need to fund deployment accounts with the native token and saving developers thousands of dollars in gas fees.

What’s next on Metal’s roadmap?

The team behind Metal is committed to simplifying Smart Contract deployments by abstracting away complexities. Their roadmap includes expanding the contract library to offer developers a wider selection of projects to clone. Additionally, they will soon launch instant frontends providing end-users with user-friendly interfaces to interact with deployed contracts. Stay tuned!