Thread by @TheDeFISaint

Soon, we'll bid farewell to the Era of having to lose your seed phrase means losing your account

Account Abstraction will forever change the Blockchain industry

The next billion users won’t have to write 12 words on paper again

Here's all you need to know about AA:

Before we deep dive into the concept of account abstraction, The way accounts have been operating is often mimicked to “one fits all”.

Imagine in clothing “one size fits all” It shouldn’t be the same as how accounts should operate in this web3 industry.

The need for AA arose as a result of so many incompatibilities in how the Ethereum account works

Ethereum accounts are of two types:

• Externally Owned Accounts (EOA)
• Contract Accounts (CA)

Externally Owned Accounts are controlled by anyone with the private keys while Contract Accounts are smart contract accounts controlled by code.

EOA is tied to the users and managed by a cryptographic pair of private and public keys.

For EOA to interact with Ethereum, they have to initiate a transaction and pay gas fees for EVM execution

CAs can only send a transaction upon EOA authorization and cannot pay gas fees.

Both these accounts types are still in use to date but with several limitations

These limitations are:

• Losing my private key means my account is lost forever
• Risk of losing assets to malicious actors via phishing, hacks, social engineering e.t.c
• Payment of gas fees in only native tokens
Manually approve each Txns and so many others.

So imagine a situation where EOA has the ability to execute EVM codes like CA (smart contracts) and CA now has the ability to initiate transactions and pay for gas fees just like EOA.

Wait a bit, Saint…So like you reversed their functionalities?

No Ser, rather both doing what each other can’t do before i.e Improved functionalities

This is simply the concept of account abstraction.

In summary, Account Abstraction means EOAs can now do what CAs do and/or CAs can now do what EOAs does with improved and upgraded functionalities.

Chains Leveraging AA

• Ethereum
• zkSync Era
• Starknet

Ethereum

The current state of EVM doesn’t support account abstraction but for AA to be implemented, it has to be done in two ways:

• Upgrading EOAs to execute code
• Upgrading CAs (Smart Contracts)

1/ Upgrading EOAs to execute code

This simply transforms EOAs to act as smart contracts i.e to make EOAs programmable

This can be done in two ways:

• EIP 3074
• EIP 5003

2/ Upgrading CAs (smart contracts)

This simply transforms CAs so they can initiate transactions and pay for gas just like EOAs.

This can be done in two ways:

• EIP 2938
• EIP 4337

zkSync Era

zkSync’s approach to AA takes the form of Ethereum’s EIP 4337 which transforms these account types to act just as CAs.

zkSync's AA is implemented natively into the chain and it's the first EVM chain to support that.

It focuses more on improving the overall UX for web3 users and bringing mass adoption in the following ways:

• No more seed phrases:

Introduces social recovery, biometric verifications e.t.c

• Payment of fees in any token:

Introduces paymaster which covers fees on behalf of the users.

• Uninterrupted user experience:

Limits every interaction signing by introducing sign once and make as many interactions within a defined parameter.

• Automatic payments:

Create recurring payment subscriptions, scheduled transfers e.t.c

• Multicall:

Bundle multiple Txn into one by introducing one-click experience for all.

StarkNet

Similar to zkSync’s approach, StarkNet also launches its chain with the native account abstraction.

StarkNet currently offers Signature Abstraction which will allow different account contracts to use different signature validation schemes than Ethereum’s ECDSA (elliptic curve digital signature algorithm).

ECDSA simply means Txns signature must originate from EOAs private key before it’s considered valid.

Signature Abstraction eliminates this by allowing users to define custom rules for authorizing wallets to Initiate Txns.

StarkNet last proposal also included fee abstraction

community.starknet.io/t/starknet-acc…

Having gotten to know everything about Account Abstraction, Now let's look at Protocols and wallets leveraging this tech

Protocols leveraging AA:

• @KromatikaFi leverages AA via Ethereum’s EIP 4337 by introducing Gasless Swap (Relayers cover users’ fees in receiving tokens).

No more fees in $ETH or Native EVM chains.

Wallets Leveraging AA:

• @argentHQ
• @AmbireWallet
• @PlenaFinance
• @itsobvioustech
• @MetaMask

I expect to see a lot of protocols and wallets adopt the concept of AA in their underlying mechanics when being talked about more often.

This is still the first wave of this amazing tech and we're early.

There would be more proposals to improve it on Ethereum and the next wave will be hot that the whole CT will talk about it.

Lastly, I'm bullish on Protocols already implementing AA.

Keep an eye on them as they'll surely gain traction

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Tagging some Chads, I'd love to hear their thoughts

• @DefiIgnas
• @phtevenstrong
• @milesdeutscher
• @0xSalazar
• @ViktorDefi
• @ThorHartvigsen
• @itamarl
• @LadyofCrypto1

https://twitter.com/TheDeFISaint/status/1658421326409867264