Account abstraction on Ethereum
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Vid Kersic, Blockchain Lab:UM, Ethereum Protocol Fellow
Ethereum Slovenia Meetup
Feb 1, 2024
Goals
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- What is the current status quo of accounts?
- What's wrong with the current status?
- What is account abstraction and why do we need it?
- Future of account abstraction
Vitalik's quote
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"Account abstraction is something that has for a long time been a dream of the Ethereum developers"
Discussions about AA started around 2016/2017
Status quo of Eth transactions
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- Setup Web3/crypto wallet (mobile, browser extension, hardware …)
- Create a seed phrase (those 12/18/24 words)
- Generate some accounts (seed phrase -> private key -> public key -> address)
- Send transactions from address signed by a private key
Most adopted Ethereum accounts: Externally Owned Accounts (EOA)
What's wrong with EOA?
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You mustn't lose your seed phrase
Need some ETH to use it
Limited to single cryptographic algorithm (secp256k1, not quantum secure)
Sequential transactions - incremental nonce
One account always used by one person
But we already have another way…
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Contract Accounts (CA) are already here and in prod!
Account is a smart contract
Controlled/governed by code
You can implement anything you want, infinite possibilities - multi-sig (2/3, 3/5, …), social recovery
Examples of Contract Accounts
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(Gnosis) Safe (multi-sig wallet - 2/3, 3/5 …, from 2019)
Argent (account abstraction wallet, social recovery, from 2018)
What's wrong with Contract Accounts?
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https://ambergroup.medium.com/account-abstraction-will-evolve-wallets-69446574e544
What's wrong with Contract Accounts?
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No standardization, wallets from different vendors not compatible
Multi-sig wallets - still need EOA
Private/centralized relayers (not decentralized and fully censorship-resistant)
Use of contract account limit to single use case
EOA vs. Contract Account
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EOA
- Free to create
- Controlled by a single private key (derived from seed phrase)
- Can initiate transactions
Contract Account
- Must deploy smart contract
- Controlled by logic/code
- Cannot initiate transactions, must be done by EOA
Account abstraction
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How to abstract all components of accounts while preserving decentralization and censorship restitance of Ethereum?
Yoav's quote
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"Account abstraction is easy… unless you care about censorship resistance"
Account abstraction
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What are the main components we want to abstract?
- how we pay for transactions - gas abstraction
- how we verify if transaction is correct - signature/validation abstraction
- which transaction is next - nonce abstraction
History of AA on Ethereum
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EIP-2938: smart contracts can start transaction execution (new EVM opcodes)
EIP-3074: delegate control of EOA to a smart contract (new EVM opcodes)
ERC-4337: account abstraction using alt mempool
ERC-4337
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The latest proposal for AA (still Contract Accounts, but more generalized)
ERC, not EIP!!! (no changes to the core protocol)
Covers all wanted features:
- gas abstraction - pay with any token
- nonce abstraction - parallel transactions
- signautre/validation abstraction - post-quantum cryptography, passkeys, multi-sig
Architecture
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Transactions are now user operations
Centralized relayers replaced with bundlers
Gas sponsoring enabled by paymasters
Single point of entry on the Ethereum - entry point smart contract
User operations workflow
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- Setup AA wallet (passkeys, seed phrase, hardware wallet)
- (Optional) Setup rules (over 1k USD Ledger otherwise MetaMask, social recovery)
- (Optional) Use paymaster for gas
- Send user operation to bundler
- Bundlers send batch of user operations to public transaction mempool
Use cases
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- Session keys
- Transaction batching
- Contract/account whitelisting
- Social recovery
- Multi-sig wallets
- Spending limits
- Custom tokens to pay for gas
- Anything you can think of :)
Projects working on the ERC-4337
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Standard: Eth Infinitism (or OpenGSN or ERC-4337 core devs)
Paymasters: Pimlico, Stackup, Circle (USDC)
Bundlers: Alchemy, Stackup, Pimlico, Etherspot, Silius :)
Wallets: Candide Wallet, Ambire Wallet, MetaMask
dapps: Gnosis Safe, CyberConnect
What's next?
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- Bundlers are currently solo -> public P2P mempool for user operations
- RIP-7560 -> native account abstraction (but first on rollups/L2s)
- Changes and updates to entry point smart contract -> gas and other optimizations
What's next?
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- ERC-6900 & ERC-7579 -> modular account abstraction (plugin system for smart accounts)
- Support for AA in existing dapps and onboarding million/billion of users
Thank you for your attention
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Email: vid.kersic@yahoo.com
Twitter/X: @vidkersic
Farcaster: kersic.eth
Lens: @vidkersic
Wanna contribute (bundler)?
https://github.com/silius-rs