Blockchain
Externally owned accounts (EOAs) have some limitations that account abstraction aims to overcome. EOAs are coupled with a signer, and verification logic is hardcoded in the EVM. Additionally, there’s no way to recover a lost account. Account abstraction allows for the development of smart contract accounts, which offer a better user experience, and greater security due to full flexibility when developing any logic.
Accounts Limitations
End users interact with Ethereum through Externally Owned Accounts (EOAs), and those have limitations:
• Coupled with a signer
• Verification logic is hardcoded in the EVM
• No way to recover a lost account2/11
— zkSync ∎ (@zksync) March 29, 2023
Smart Contract Accounts (CAs) will enable new features like using different authentication methods, replacing seed phrases with social recovery, paying gas in ERC20s with Paymasters, integrating allowlists and scam blocklists, scheduling one-time and recurring transactions, and creating infinite account customizations.
EIP-4337 was a significant milestone in the implementation of account abstraction, which allowed CAs to send txs called UserOperations to a separate mempool where bundlers package and send them to the EntryPoint contract to be executed. However, EIP-4337 had to make some compromises to avoid a hard fork, and there were separate transaction flows for EOAs and CAs, a separate mempool, and separate validator/bundler roles. EOAs couldn’t use Paymasters, which was a significant drawback.
zkSync Era integrated account abstraction at the protocol level, which means there is a single transaction flow, mempool, and validator/bundler role. In addition, externally owned accounts can now also use Paymasters. This is a significant improvement over EIP-4337, and it will enable a more seamless and efficient experience for users.
The first real-world use of native account abstraction on zkSync Era Mainnet took place at ETHDenver, where thousands of attendees claimed and spent over 26k BUIDLBux tokens without paying any gas. It was a significant milestone that demonstrated the potential of account abstraction to revolutionize the Ethereum ecosystem.
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