Tired of the anxiety of losing your seed phrase? Imagine a Web3 account that's as easy to recover as your Google or Twitter account. Account abstraction makes this a reality, bridging the gap between Web2 convenience and Web3 power. This blog post will demystify account abstraction, exploring its mechanics and its potential to revolutionize Web3 accessibility.

What is Account Abstraction?

A Seedless Web3 Forget private keys and seed phrases. Account abstraction replaces them with a smart contract acting as your personal wallet. This smart contract houses two key functions: validation and execution. Validation determines how you authorize transactions (think biometrics, social logins, or hardware wallets), while execution carries out the transaction once validated. Account abstraction is formalized by EIP-4337, now an ERC standard, paving the way for a more user-friendly Web3 experience.

Account abstraction is now live on major EVM chains, including Ethereum and Arbitrum, as well as on ZkEVM. Many other chains are also adding support. On EVM chains, account abstraction is enabled through EntryPoint contracts and an alternative mempool, while on ZkEVM, the feature is built-in at the protocol level. Although both approaches achieve similar goals, they work in slightly different ways. In this blog, we’ll discuss each implementation in detail and explore how they are shaping the future of Web3 wallets.

How it works ?

Account abstraction is achieved by deploying a smart contract that adheres to specific standards. Matter Labs has developed example contracts that you can use as a starting point for building your own wallet (repo). The core contract to focus on is IAccount.sol. Your contract should inherit from this interface and implement two key functions: validateTransaction and executeTransaction. These functions are responsible for validating and executing transactions, respectively. We will look at the code part in next blog.

Account abstraction on Ethereum

On Ethereum, Matter Labs has deployed a central contract called EntryPoint. All transactions using account abstraction flow through this EntryPoint contract on the blockchain. Instead of sending transactions directly to the standard mempool, these transactions are submitted to an alternative mempool. This alternative mempool is managed by nodes that process your transactions and then forward them to the EntryPoint contract. The EntryPoint contract then interacts with your smart contract wallet (your account abstraction account) to execute the transaction. These alternative mempool nodes are incentivized by receiving the gas fees paid by your smart contract account.

Account abstraction on ZkEVM

ZkEVM has native account abstraction support built directly into the protocol. Unlike Ethereum's approach with an alternative mempool, ZkEVM utilizes the standard mempool for all transactions. When a transaction involving an account abstraction wallet is submitted, the ZkEVM directly interacts with the smart contract account to validate and execute the transaction. This streamlined process simplifies the architecture and potentially reduces gas costs.

We’ve now covered the basics of account abstraction, but there’s much more to explore. Topics like paymasters, session keys, and zkLogin add even more flexibility and power to smart contract wallets. We’ll dive into these advanced features in upcoming blog posts, so stay tuned!