account abstraction

Account abstraction is the idea of making an account's rules programmable instead of hard-wired. On Ethereum today there are two kinds of accounts: externally owned accounts (EOAs), controlled by a single ECDSA private key with fixed validity rules, and contract accounts, which run code but cannot start a transaction by themselves. Account abstraction blurs that line, letting an account be governed by arbitrary smart-contract logic that decides what counts as a valid transaction.

Once validation is programmable, a whole class of usability and security features becomes possible. The account can require a multisig, a passkey, or a hardware-backed signature instead of one ECDSA key; it can enforce daily spending limits, allowlists, or time-locks; it can let someone else pay the gas, or pay gas in a token rather than ETH; it can batch many actions into one atomic transaction (approve-and-swap in a single click); and it can support social recovery so a lost device is not a lost fortune. The fixed 'one key, one signature, you pay gas in ETH' model is replaced by rules the user chooses.

There are two main paths to deliver this. ERC-4337 achieves account abstraction without changing the Ethereum protocol, by running a separate higher-layer mempool of UserOperations processed through a global EntryPoint contract — meaning smart-contract wallets work on Ethereum as it exists. EIP-7702, shipped in the 2025 Pectra upgrade, takes a complementary protocol-level step: it lets an ordinary EOA temporarily 'set' contract code so it can act like a smart-contract account for a transaction, bringing batching, sponsorship, and richer authorization to the billions of existing EOAs without forcing users to migrate to a new address.