Ethereum, Base developers abandon effort to align account abstraction proposals

Ethereum and Base developers have stopped collaborating on a project to align two account abstraction proposals, and will pursue separate standards rather than one design, according to Ethlabs developer Derek Chiang.

The proposals — Base-led EIP-8130 and Ethereum's EIP-8141 — both aim to make wallets easier to use. That includes paying fees without holding ETH and signing with a phone passkey.

The authors of EIP-8130 and EIP-8141 tried to define a shared standard that could potentially work for both the Ethereum Layer 1 network and Base Layer 2, Chiang said in a Monday post on X.

However, the talks ended last week after the two sides diverged on their priorities, Chiang added. Ethereum is emphasizing censorship resistance, privacy and security, while Base is optimizing for scale, customization and compliance.

"While we identified a number of technical solutions, they all required one side or the other to compromise at least a little bit on their core goals," said Chiang. "So separate ways we went, putting the burden on wallets to deal with the fragmentation that ensues."

If both proposals ship as planned, wallet developers may have to support two native transaction formats. "If they execute well, and if the wallet community can bridge over the fragmentation, we may well end up with the best possible UX for the end users," said Chiang.

'Must-ship'

Ethereum has placed EIP-8141 (Frame Transactions) on the path for its upcoming Hegotá upgrade. In a tier list published earlier this month, the Ethereum Foundation Protocol cluster gave EIP-8141 a "must-ship" label.

The proposal is designed to make account abstraction native to Ethereum to improve security and post-quantum readiness. It proposes treating a transaction as a sequence of programmable "frames" that separately validate the sender, approve who pays gas, and execute the user's actions.

"Ultimately, frame transactions realize the original vision of account abstraction: an account simply becomes an address with code," the proposal said.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, a co-author of the proposal, described EIP-8141 as an "omnibus that wraps up and solves every remaining problem that AA was intended to address" in a February post on X. On Sept. 5, he added that EIP-8141 has made "a lot of important progress" in the last few months, and that the proposal "gets close to optimal." 

Meanwhile, EIP-8130, authored by Base, introduces a new transaction type and an onchain "Keystore" that together provide account abstraction — custom authentication, call batching, and gas sponsorship. The keystore is designed to store each account's approved signers and authenticators.