Account Abstraction Can Help To Access And Restore Accounts In Case The Private Key Or 12 Recovery Words Are Lost And Solve The Annoying Problem Of Many Users In Ethereum Wallets.

, shortening the account is an innovation that users will probably not be able to live without after its implementation.

In this article, we explain account abstraction and how it can revolutionize Ethereum wallets and make the use of crypto more universal.

 What is account abstraction?

This topic is very technical, but we will try to explain it in the simplest way to make it easier to understand.

Account abstraction is a proposal to change the architecture of Ethereum wallets and make them more straightforward and user-friendly. If this proposed plan is implemented, it can significantly transform the use and general use of crypto. Account abstraction can provide the following facilities and features to users:

The possibility of recovering accounts through the accounts of trusted friends and acquaintances

Instead of recovering accounts with a seed phrase or 12 recovery words, you can recover them through other trusted charges that belong to friends and acquaintances. 

The possibility of taking advantage of the multi-signature feature of accounts and greater security

This feature is practically the same as the two-factor authentication of crypto wallets. 

Better transactions

The possibility of grouping several transactions and paying user transaction fees by protocols.

What problem does account abstraction solve? 

In Web 2 and your accounts on different sites, forgetting your password is not annoying. As long as you can access your email account, you can easily set a new password and regain access to your account with just a recovery email. Be.

But if you forget or lose your crypto wallet password, it can be very annoying or, in some cases, devastating. If you haven’t saved the seed phrase or 12 words to recover your account, you have lost the funds you had in your wallet.

This possibility of losing everything is unpleasant and attractive for new users. That is why many of them either give up the gift of using cryptocurrencies or prefer to keep their funds in the wallets of centralized exchanges. In addition, placing assets in non-custodial wallets of centralized exchanges, which have no possibility of Recovery except for a vague and uncertain seed phrase, is a nightmarish experience for new users.

Account abstraction solves this problem. But to understand how account shortening works, you must know how Ethereum accounts work.

 

Types of Ethereum accounts

Ethereum has two types of accounts: Externally Owned Accounts (EOA) and Contractual Accounts. EOA accounts are regular accounts like MetaMask wallets. You use them to send and receive tokens and interact with smart contracts.

Contractual accounts are the same as smart contracts. (automated vending machines that work with code) Smart contracts are programmed to perform fixed operations, such as exchanging tokens triggered when you run the corresponding code. Of course, to run their code, you have to pay a fee, or in other words, a gas fee.

Contract accounts have their code, but Externally Owned Accounts (EOA) do not. Because contracted arrangements have their code, they can do more than accounts held by external entities (EOA). For example, they can create new contracts, which EOA accounts cannot do.

Most importantly, contract accounts do not have private keys. One person holds EOA accounts. Programming codes control them.

The account and the account owner (public and private key controlling entity) are the same. But the best case is that the account is separate from the account owner, and the account owner can restore and access his account without accessing the private keys. Account abstraction provides this possibility.

How does account abstraction work?

The most significant change that account simplification enables is the conversion of ordinary individual accounts (EOA) to contract accounts. With this change, you own a smart contract that contains your purse instead of controlling a regular wallet. You can also restore your wallet through other trusted wallets belonging to your friends or acquaintances and create a new wallet for yourself through a series of wallets that you have whitelisted.

Such an evolution allows users to customize their account permissions and rules according to their needs. Also, users can make their accounts multi-signature, making transactions subject to multi-party signatures. This multi-signatory party can include multiple wallets or simply something like two-factor authentication.

However, account shortening does not exist in the ecosystem of the Ethereum blockchain and has not yet been implemented. Several Ethereum Blockchain Improvement Proposals (EIPs) have been proposed to address this issue, and EIP-4337 is the latest. It was first proposed and implemented in layer two chains such as zkSync and Starknet, which is why wallets such as Argent are based on these blockchains. have become.

What is the proposed EIP-4337 Ethereum Blockchain Improvement Plan?

Since hashing is missing from the Ethereum ecosystem, several EIPs have come up over the years trying to make this change. Both the proposals, EIP-2938 and EIP-3074, intended to improve the Ethereum blockchain by addressing the issue of account abstraction. Simply put, EIP-2938 planned to upgrade smart contracts to act as higher-level accounts, but EIP-3074 was meant to allow existing EOAs to delegate account control to a smart contract. Both of these EIPs are now deprecated, and EIP-4337 is the latest to attempt to improve the situation.

The proposed plan of EIP-4337 imitates the idea of ​​summarizing accounts. In other words, it distinguishes between EOA accounts (regular accounts) and contract accounts (smart contracts). But by bifurcating some of the required on-chain and off-chain infrastructure, it simplifies the task of writing code and implementing smart contract wallets on Ethereum.

What are the benefits of account abstraction?

The most important advantage of this innovation is that with their help, self-custodial wallets can be easily provided to everyone and made common. Account abstraction gives you full custody and protection of your wallets. Account shortening offers a new approach and method for recovering accounts.

Performing several transactions at the same time in an aggregated manner

With the help of shortening accounts, instead of going through several transactions and tedious processes to do something like a token exchange, you can consolidate all those processes and commerce together. In other words, with the help of account abstraction, you can perform several transactions together with one click. Imagine exchanging tokens in seconds without having to sign multiple contracts.

session keys _

By using session keys, users can grant smart contracts access to their accounts for a certain period, with a specific fixed fee, or in a particular volume of transactions. One of the uses of these keys will be in Web3 games. Instead of allowing access to your wallet every time, you can approve the interactions that intelligent contracts have with your wallet with the conditions you determine.

Account recovery through the accounts of friends and acquaintances ( Social Recovery ) 

Vitalik Buterin says this is his preferred method of securing wallets.

The purpose of Social Recovery is that if people lose access to their account due to losing or forgetting the seed phrase, they can still protect their accounts with the help of addresses they have already whitelisted, such as those of trusted friends and family, to recover them and access their funds.

Permission control

Account shortening is a kind of two-step authentication and validation; it keeps a list of fraudulent addresses, blocks any transactions from or to them, and limits the transfer of funds from accounts. Of course, you can also use off-chain services to protect your account further; For example, use a security service that checks and confirms the authenticity of NFT collections.

Plugins

Plugins increase the functionality and usability of your accounts. You can see them in the form of programs or browser extensions that you use for games, account recovery using friends’ and acquaintances’ accounts (Social Recovery), session keys, and other things.

 

Other benefits of plugins include:

• Gas fee payment or fees using all tokens.
• The possibility of activating protocols for gas fee payment or costs.
• The possibility of turning phones into hardware wallets
• Increasing the ability to upgrade accounts

Which wallets support account abstraction?

Some of the most popular Ethereum wallets that have utilized the account-shortening feature include:

Soulwallet is a web3 wallet that supports EIP-4337.

Unipass Wallet: It is a non-custodial wallet in which it is possible to recover the account through the accounts of friends and acquaintances (social Recovery).

Stackup Wallet: Another EIP-4337 compatible wallet.

Argent Wallet: It is one of the most popular wallets that allow social Recovery of accounts for users.