All you need to know about account abstraction and how it can help crypto mass adoption

Crypto wallets are an integral part of the digital asset industry. Without these storage solutions, investors and traders cannot buy, sell or hold cryptocurrencies. However, crypto wallets can be a bit difficult to understand and use.

Once you overcome the technical process of creating one, you need to deal with long and difficult-to-remember private keys, complex transaction procedures and security risks. Moreover, any blunders involving crypto wallets can turn out to be extremely costly. For instance, millions of dollars’ worth of crypto are lost each year simply due to lost/misplaced private keys.

Keeping these pain points in mind, developers at Ethereum have come up with a solution that could make it easier to deal with crypto wallets. It is called wallet abstraction. This development could make it easier to use and customise crypto wallets. In fact, the convenience and utility that account abstraction provides could even boost crypto mass adoption. But what is account abstraction and how does it work? Tag along to find out.

Account Abstraction is a concept that makes Ethereum wallets more user-friendly and helps prevent the loss of crypto keys. To understand how it works, we must first delve into the types of Ethereum wallets in existence today.

There are two kinds of wallets on Ethereum: externally owned accounts (EOAs) and contract accounts (CAs). EOAs are owned and operated by humans. These are the most common types of wallets today. Examples of EOAs are the storage solutions offered by MetaMask, Coinbase Wallet, etc. On the other hand, CAs are controlled by smart contracts. They cannot function on their own and merely carry out pre-determined actions if certain criteria are met.

Of course, the main issue with EOAs is that they are controlled and operated by humans and hence susceptible to human error. For instance, private keys allow users to access their accounts and initiate transactions. However, if this private key is misplaced or forgotten, the user is locked out of the account. More importantly, any funds stored in the wallet would be lost forever.

To address these issues, account abstraction combines EOA and CA wallets. This adds a smart contract layer to EOA wallets. Now, EOA wallets can be programmed to carry out pre-determined actions in case certain circumstances arise. For instance, in case of lost/forgotten private keys, users can set up different mechanisms for the private keys to be retrieved. They can even list trusted friends and family members to verify the loss of keys. This helps users regain access to the wallet without putting the enclosed funds at risk.

Through account abstraction, wallet holders can also set up restrictions on wallet usage. For instance, they can restrict the number and amount of transactions in a day. Wallet holders can even set up a 2-factor authorisation for crypto transactions – this will require other users to sign off on a transaction before it can be processed. Account abstraction will also allow wallet holders to sign multiple transactions at once, thereby reducing gas fees.

The account abstraction feature was announced by the Ethereum Foundation earlier this month. Yoav Weiss, a lead security researcher who worked on account abstraction along with Vitalik Buterin, introduced the feature at WalletCon, a conference that was part of the recently-concluded ETHDenver event.

However, just a couple of days before the event, the feature was already introduced through a new standard, ERC-4337, which was deployed through a smart contract called Entry Point. According to sources close to the matter, the smart contract has already undergone a full security audit. The contract is also EMV-compatible, meaning that it can be deployed on all EVM chains. As such, we should expect several infrastructure providers to announce support for ERC-4337 through their wallet services in the coming months.

"Great news! Account Abstraction (ERC-4337) is here and it will change and improve wallet handling a lot: wallets without seed phrases, account recovery, transaction limits, and many other great features are now possible," said Professor John Keating, CEO of Fiscal Solutions in a March 3 tweet.

The convenience that account abstraction provides could increase crypto mass adoption. It ensures that crypto wallets are easy to use and the funds are not simply lost due to forgetting or misplaced private keys. It also ensures that crypto wallets are much more user-friendly and this could attract a whole new audience group to the digital asset industry, one that was previously wary of the complexity and hurdles of using crypto wallets.