Key facts:
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The account abstraction proposes that wallets stop using private keys.
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With smart contracts, you could optimize the payment of commissions and the signing of transactions.
The Ethereum ERC-4337 smart contract has already been deployed on the mainnet. This new standard allows “account abstraction”, a tool to customize security measures according to the needs of each user, optimize the payment of commissions and facilitate the signing of transactions, among other advantages.
For ERC-4337, the smart contract is used EntryPoint. In addition to Ethereum, it is available for other networks that support the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), such as Polygon, Optimism, Arbitrum, BNB Smart Chain, Avalanche, and Gnosis.
He announcement of the implementation in the main network was given to the public last Wednesday, March 1, during the WalletCon Colorado 2023 event, before the Ethereum Denver 2023 conference, both in the United States.
The OpenZeppelin company, co-founded by the Argentine Damián Brener, was in charge of the security audit of the smart contract. Meanwhile, companies like StackUp, Alchemy, Biconomy, EtherSpot, Candide Wallet, and BlockNative were the first to develop software around account abstraction.
There are also many others participating, such as MetaMask, Arbitrum, Polygon, Safe, Argent and WalletConnect collaborating. The Ethereum Foundation collaborated with scholarships for USD 300,000 in various projects.
What are the advantages of abstracting accounts in Ethereum?
Account abstraction or ERC-4337 is a project that, as commented in CriptoNoticias, has full support of Vitalik Buterinco-founder of Ethereum. He himself was in charge of designing and presenting the Roadmap of the project in mid-2022.
At the moment, Ethereum wallets like MetaMask use what are called externally owned accounts (EOA). These accounts are controlled by unique private keys. Should these keys be lost or leaked, user funds may be at risk.
Instead, account abstraction proposes using smart contracts to add extra layers of security to an account If necessary. For example, a wallet with large amounts of money in it may require two-factor authentication, fingerprinting, recognition, or other similar measures to move funds.
You could even add the ability to add another user’s wallet (a friend or family member, for example) as a backup to help recover a lost seed phrase or schedule pre-approved automatic payments.
As Explain John Rising, founder of StackUp, another feature that ERC-4337 adds is the ability to sign once for a set of transactions or movements. This would change the current method, which requires a signature for each user action (login, change network, pay the gas for a transaction, among others).
In addition, new possibilities would be added regarding the payment of commissions. With the abstraction of accounts, you could pay the commissions from another wallet or even use stablecoins for it. Today, it can only be done by the wallet that makes a transaction, and using ether (ETH).
Finally, the ERC-4337 even proposes the creation of a memory pool (mempool). Instead of collecting pending transactions, it would have the function of storing user operations that would later be included in Ethereum blocks.
What are ERCs on Ethereum?
ERC is the acronym for Ethereum Request for Comment. Is about standards that determine the operation of applications, tokens and other developments so that they can seamlessly interact with the network protocol. Not all users are required to use an ERC, but those who do agree with its characteristics.
An example of ERCs are ERC-20 tokens. Its creation did not change how Ethereum works, but the developers agreed that all such tokens would share certain characteristics. The same with ERC-721 tokens, better known as non-fungible tokens or NFTs.
