Ethereum developers debate: The future of account abstraction

Author: Macauley Peterson, Blockworks; Compiler: Deng Tong, Golden Finance

Ethereum’s Dencun upgrade is ready on March 13, and Thursday’s core developer conference call reiterated that customers The end team will move the entire system to the mainnet.

Attention quickly returned to the candidate for the next upgrade after Dencun, now known asPectra, the Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) that specifically dealt with account abstraction issues .

Challenge: Make the account abstraction roadmap more concrete.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, who has rarely participated in recent core developer calls, started the discussion by calling for "unanimity of long-term goals."

Buterin said that in addition to some "small things", the Ethereum account system transformation has four main goals. It should:

• Allow key rotation and The key is deprecated;

• Quantum computer resistant;

• < strong>Allow batch processing;

• Allow sponsored transactions.

Ethereum’s “End User Account” (EOA) model clearly fails to meet the first two goals, so the entire EVM ecosystem needs to be pivoted Smart Contract Account (SCA).

“One of the best things to avoid is creating two completely separate developer ecosystems for smart contract wallets and EOA,” Buterin said.

Core developers have previously identified the need to deliver feature upgrades to improve user experience in the short term, even as they work toward Ethereum’s multi-year roadmap.

The first attempt at account abstraction on the Ethereum mainnet is EIP-4337, which debuted at the 2023 ETHDenver conference.

“This is meant to be a test platform,” Ethereum developer Yoav Weiss reminded his colleagues on the phone. "It allows [us] to experiment with account abstraction on different EVM chains without having to agree on how the account abstraction works."

Since then, this improvement has produced millions of Smart contract account. Layer 2 networks zkSync and Starknet even employ their own 4337-based native account abstraction methods.

But there is a problem. Weiss said these custom implementations lead to wallet fragmentation — you can’t use Starknet’s Argent wallet on other chains — and potential new attack vectors.

The solution is to have a standardized and secure version that any Layer 2 can use, allowing for a better cross-chain user experience.

"This is going to happen with or without us, so we might as well help them get it done," Weiss said.

The road ahead

Developers are focusing on two competing EIPs: EIP-3074 and 5806, which are considered A stepping stone for a more comprehensive smart contract account system on Ethereum.

Core developers Lightclient and Andrew Ashkhmin favor the former, while Weiss outlines some of the advantages of the latter.

It was agreed that more discussion is needed, but one thing is clear: Whether or not Pectra wins, it should keep the path open for further innovation.

"We need to make sure that EIP doesn't make it difficult for us to do account abstraction later, and in that sense both [3074 and 5806] are good," Weiss agreed.

Developers must weigh the need to improve Ethereum for current users while staying consistent with the future trajectory of the network.

Ashkmin, a software engineer on Erigon’s account team, saidEIP-3074 is fairly EOA-specific, but “there is a very natural path to extending it to be smart contract-centric”.

This is a good thing, says Ahmed Bitar, core developer at Nethermind, noting that EOA won’t go awayunless “average users” can easily handle smart contract accounts.

Buterin does not make decisions, but his opinions are influential in the Ethereum community, and he has embraced this approach.

"I think that's exactly why 3074 and 5806 are being discussed," he said. "In the long term, if EOA is removed as a protocol feature in the final phase, it does not mean that users will be forced to change wallets."