As account abstraction technology continues to gain popularity in bringing more people to the Ethereum network Vitalik Buterin has a different view. The inventor of Ethereum shared some of the problems encountered when integrating the account abstraction technology into the blockchain network.
Speaking at the Ethereum Community Conference (ETHCC) in Paris, Buterin described account abstraction (AA) as elegant technology. He noted that, unlike other upgrades on the blockchain ecosystem, any development on the account abstraction has minimal changes to the primary protocol.
Challenges Facing Account Abstraction
Buterin mentioned that developers have been improving the account abstraction technology since 2015. Despite the efforts much has not been achieved in migrating the Externally Owned Wallets (EOAs) to the smart contract network.
However, if the developer’s efforts yielded the desired results, Buterin acknowledged that managing crypto wallets would become more effortless than owning an email account. The crypto entrepreneur anticipates that the AA developers will expedite the transition to the smart contract wallets.
If achieved the user will be allowed to recover their seed phrases more effortlessly. A seed phrase is vital in every transaction since it provides the user with the necessary private key.
In an email account, the seed phrases provide the user with the reset password account option. This feature supports improving the privacy of the email account.
Even though the AA team have been exploring ways to enable users to use smart contract instead of the EOAs for decades, the Ethereum team joined them in 2021 after debuting Ethereum Improvement Proposal 4337 (EIP-4337). This development provided developers with a platform to build non-custodial wallets on programmable smart contract networks.
The team behind the EIP-4337 aimed at providing the user with wallet recovery features. Beyond this Ethereum upgrade focused more on reducing the transaction cost by facilitating signless transactions.
Role of Account Abstraction in Web3 Adoption
In light of July 19 report, Buterin stated that the EIP-4337 and other related AA development would drive Web3 adoption. Despite the upgrades, Buterin revealed plans to introduce a new feature on blockchain to enable the user to receive funds before completing the registration process.
In his report, the Ethereum co-founder restated that the incoming projects aim to allow users to receive tokens, including stablecoins, on their smart contract wallets. This development will enable the user to pay the gas cost without their converting their Ethereum tokens.
Ethereum Reveals Next Move
In the meantime, the Ethereum team plans to introduce a “paymaster” on the EIP-4337. The paymaster will enable the user to pay gas fees with other tokens.
Buterin explained that integrating signature aggregators on the EIP-4337 will support paymasters. During the release of the said signature aggregators, multiple signers were allowed to take part in the transaction, but only one signature will be used.
Reflecting on the performance of the signature aggregators, the Ethereum developer confessed that the upgrade was a big deal in enhancing Ethereum rollups.
Interestingly, the roll-up technology enables the Ethereum network to combine batches of transactions into a single batch. The executive explained that Ethereum utilizes the layer 2 scaling network, including the Optimism and zero knowledge rollups to batch transactions before it validates on the mainnet.
He believes that the account abstraction technology will support signature aggregators. Buterin mentioned that the upgrade will support more data to undergo compression at a cheaper computation. With the upgrade, Buterin estimated that cost to be cheaper by 86 times.
After the successful launch of EIP-4337, the Ethereum team embarked on developing Proto danksharding (EIP-4884). In a previous report, the Ethereum team announced that the Proto-danksharding feature would reduce cost and improve data usage efficiency.