This article comes from CointelegraphThis article comes from

, the original author: Andrew Fenton, compiled by Odaily translator Katie Ku.

Bitcoin proponents have been repeating the phrase "be your own bank" for years. But in fact, storing any type of cryptocurrency in a wallet is no different from hiding cash under a mattress. This "simplicity that does not increase in value" is far from complex financial institutions such as banks.

DeFi is an improvement. Cryptocurrencies can be transferred around the world in minutes and are secured by blockchain technology. But it is far less "user-friendly" than banks, and the functions provided are not complete. Even if you understand the complicated process of setting up a wallet, the password can be stolen, and you can lose the seed phrase and the "family property" in the wallet forever.

This is all set to change with the recent surprise announcement at ETHDenver of "smart accounts" (also known as "account abstraction") on Ethereum, as well as all other chains compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) (the EVM is The software responsible for executing Ethereum-based smart contracts). Chains that can now utilize smart accounts include Polygon, Optimism, Arbitrum, BNB Smart Chain, Avalanche, and Gnosis Chain.

After years of "gestation," the new ERC-4337 standard turns crypto wallets into products that include all the functionality of a bank. "Crypto wallets provide the same functionality as banks without the need to trust banks," said Yoav Weiss, a security researcher at the Ethereum Foundation who co-authored the Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) with Vitalik.

"Account abstraction will be a way to attract the next billion users."

Account abstraction benefits include two-factor authentication, signing transactions on your phone, setting account monthly spending limits, using session keys to play blockchain games without constantly approving transactions, decentralized recovery of wallets, smart accounts can be configured to automatically pay Billing and subscriptions, etc.Account abstraction will revolutionize the crypto user experience.

Account Abstraction Timeline (Yoav Weiss)

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What does account abstraction mean?

Account abstraction is a complicated technical term used to describe something that is actually quite friendly. Weiss and zkSync hope to replace it with the more descriptive term “smart account.”

“Account abstraction is a confusing term,” Weiss said. “These accounts are abstracted from the network, they’re not abstracted from the user. The user is using a very specific wallet that does very specific things. .From the user's point of view, it's more like using a smart account."

Alex Jupiter, senior product manager at MetaMask, said "account abstraction" means different things to different developers. To the extent that non-EVM scaling solutions including StarkWare and zkSync implemented a modified version of ERC-4337 in the protocol itself, Ethereum achieved standardization.

Weiss explained: “We came up with a standard that works everywhere, with a focus on interoperability and defragmentation, which can be done more efficiently at the protocol level, for example via rollup.”

Upgrade all user accounts to smart accounts through native implementation, while Ethereum's new standard requires users to set up new accounts. Weiss explained: “It is inevitable that there will be a hard fork in order to achieve the upgrade of all accounts in the future, but it will take a long time for this to happen.”

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What are the advantages of smart accounts?

One of the greatest benefits of adopting smart accounts is that it allows new users to "silk-smoothly" join the decentralized crypto world without having to worry about complex seed phrases or understand the technical process of setting up a wallet. All they need to do is open a smart account through a smartphone app using a fingerprint or face scanner.

While there are plenty of crypto wallets currently available as smartphone apps, they have many security risks and are not suitable for holding large amounts of cryptocurrencies due to the risk of hacking. But thanks to the ability of smart accounts to store encrypted private keys on the phone's hardware security module, mobile wallets can now be almost as secure as hardware wallets.

Existing crypto users need to re-examine what they consider a true crypto wallet and how they access it. The non-custodial Cartridge Controller is actually a web-based wallet that interacts with StarkNet. Instead of a regular private key, it uses an Android or Apple "private key". Both "private keys" are based on the Web Authentication Standard (WebAuthn), an attempt to standardize user authentication for web applications using public-key cryptography.

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While a web wallet sounds like a scary proposition to longtime cryptocurrency users, Ledger co-founder Nicolas Bacca was impressed with the Cartridge web wallet and said Ledger is building a similar web-based wallet, which he says has web authentication. With the "blessing", the wallet is safe.

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Use your smartphone as a hardware walletThere are several problems with using a smartphone as a hardware wallet. Smartphone screens are a security risk as they can be hacked to trick users into approving transactions.

However, this risk can be mitigated as Smart Accounts allow users to set permissions that require two-factor authentication for higher value transactions (e.g. using a hardware wallet), or set daily, monthly or yearly spending limits from within the account .

Ledger co-founder Nicolas Bacca said that Ledger is now experimenting with this functionality. He said: "For example, when you only want to buy a small amount, you can use your phone. When you want to buy a large amount, you can use a hardware wallet, which can be scripted in the account. We are designing for this. A prototype of a web application."

A bigger problem with using smartphone wallets on Ethereum is that the security module uses a cryptographic signature system (elliptic curve) that is different from encryption. With smart accounts, the two systems can eventually talk to each other, but this requires a lot of operations and high gas fees.Motty Lavie, founder of StarkNet’s smartphone-based Braavos wallet, said that exploiting a smartphone’s security module required 240,000 computational steps:

“For this to happen on Ethereum, it would be very expensive per transaction. On StarkNet, it’s a marginal cost, and transaction fees will only increase by a few cents, which makes it feasible.”

Yoav Weiss, a security researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, said: "When these wallets gain traction, strengthen user stickiness, and users get used to this strong usability, it will become easier to promote this change in Ethereum itself. If we can Add this precompile and it's a game changer for the ecosystem."

Account Abstraction Timeline (Yoav Weiss)

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How to recover your account?

Weiss explained: "You never have to worry about losing access to your bank account. If you lose your PIN, you can always call the bank and they will verify your identity and reset your PIN. You can use a recovery service, Reset your phone and wallet passwords, but they can't steal your wallet, they can only help you get it back."

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Motty Lavie, co-founder of StarkWare Sessions Braavos Wallet (Twitter)

Braavos employs a time-locked recovery process that includes the creation of a seed phrase. Unlike normal seed phrases, this one can only submit a request to regain access to the account after four days.He added:"wisdom

Braavos is also working on using zero-knowledge proofs to “hide” mnemonics, which he believes will be a major UX (user experience) move.

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Chain game smart wallet

Bacca explained that Ledger is already working with Argent and Cartridge on a “plug-in” that will enable players in StarkWare to set up session private keys, and a large number of low-cost transactions will be automatically completed so that they don’t have to go to the trouble of approving each one.

"You can load a small piece of code on your account so it modifies how it behaves in a particular game," he says. "For example, put in a code for 'if I want to play a certain game' and that will have the transaction automatically signed." An hour. That’s why I think account abstraction is going to revolutionize the crypto user experience.” Smart accounts mean game developers can decide to become “paymasters” and pay transaction fees to incentivize usage.

MetaMask is developing a new feature called Snaps, which will outsource (crowdsource) the development of new wallet features. This may enable innovative uses of smart accounts. The Snap for Smart Accounts was developed at ETH India, which won the title of "Best ERC-4337 Tool".

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Smart Accounts make it possible to "subscribe to products with cryptocurrency"

Back in December, Visa’s crypto research team published a paper showing how Smart Accounts on StarkWare can be used to automate mortgage, TV subscription and utility payments from self-custodial crypto wallets.

Visa Crypto explained: "A user account controlled by a private key can send transactions, and smart contracts have associated code that can be executed, but smart contracts cannot initiate transactions by themselves. Transactions must always come from a user account and be signed by the user."

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Visa Crypto has devised a way to automatically transfer bills from crypto accounts. Source: Visa official websiteSo if you pay in cryptocurrency every two weeks, you have to manually initiate a "Push" transaction to pay each bill after the funds are in your wallet.Smart accounts enable "fixed automatic" payments initiated by bookkeepers.

For example, an electric company could set up a smart contract for automatic payments on its website and list its functions. For example, it can only initiate one transaction per month and sets a maximum amount it will charge. Users can then approve these conditional "fixed automatic" payments through their Smart Account, enabling automatic bill payments when their biweekly paycheck arrives.suddenly,

Encryption technology is featured in a series of new payment applications.

"If you can script your account, you can think of many more use cases that are similar to what we've done in Web2."

Account abstraction timeline. From Yoav Weiss.

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How does ERC-4337 work?

Some of the functionality supported by smart accounts is already implemented through smart contract wallets from Gnosis and Argent. However, these solutions require a centralized component, the relay, to pay transaction fees for operations. The new ERC-4337 standard on Ethereum "decentralizes" this part, along with new decentralized infrastructure called "bundlers".

Process: A smart wallet signs a "user action" which is triggered to a special mempool, which is basically just an organized queue of transactions (although not the same as Ethereum's normal mempool). "Bundlers" are like miners or validators, taking user actions from the mempool and sending the desired results back to the wallet. The bundler also pays the required gas transaction fee, which is paid by the user's contract account or a third party called a "paymaster". This could be a decentralized application, or it could be a wallet provider.