Overview
Account Abstraction(AA) is basically an upgrade in wallet design that enhances security and betters the user experience. According to an article on the official Ethereum website, account abstraction improves support for smart contract wallets,making them easier to build and safer to use without caring about the underlying technology.
**KEY TAKEAWAYS **
-Account abstraction will rapidly improve the security and user experience by executing programmable smart contracts to perform user specific functions.
-EOAs are the most common wallets where users relinquish control of their accounts when interacting with application making them more susceptible to malicious activity.
-Implementing versions of account abstraction on ethereum will take time, however some ecosystem are already incorporating these features into their respective blockchains.
Background Brief:
Before we proceed to what is account abstraction, let understand how ethereum account works.Ethereum accounts work by sending transactions to blockchain. Transactions are messages that include information about the recipients address, the amount of tokens to be sent along with the transaction.
Ethereum accounts are divided into two:
-Externally-owned Account (EOA): if you have an ethereum Account,it’s most likely an externally owned account. This type of account is controlled by a public/private key pair.Using this type of account means if the the private key is stolen,the attacker can perform transaction or if the private key is lost,then the contents of the account are lost forever. They are controlled by an Elliptic curve digital signature Algorithm(ECDSA) key, which uses cryptography to sign and verify digital transactions and also involves generating a private and a corresponding public key.
-Contract Account: These accounts,unlike EOAs are governed by the code and the code is executed on the ethereum blockchain. These accounts hold the code and state of the smart contract and can send and receive ETH or other tokens.
What is Account Abstraction(AA)?
Account Abstraction is defined as the ability to separate the control of a user’s funds from the execution of smart contract. To buttress it, it means the ability to use smart contracts to manage funds without requiring users to transfer control of their funds to the smart contract.Account Abstraction is an important concept in blockchain because it helps to improve user’s experience and security, without relinquishing full access to your wallet.
Why Account Abstraction?
The usage of EOAs has its limitations in terms of private key management. Management of private key can be difficult and some users don’t want to be responsible for securing their keys. The purported benefits of custodial or non- custodial wallets revolve around securing a wallet’s private key. The question now is - Are mainstream users technically savvy enough to secure their private keys? Or is it better for a custodian to mange a user’s private key?This is where account abstraction comes in.
Furthermore, EOAs lack access-control granularity: This means that you can’t implement spending policies or rules and are required to have an ETH balance to performance transactions. For someone who’s is bothered about his or her wallet security and would like to spend $50 or less on a particular day or want to auto-pay for a DSTV subscription. These can’t be obtained under traditional EOAs but account abstraction can.
Benefits of Account Abstraction:
1.Flexibility: Account Abstraction helps users to be flexible with their wallets. Users can create rules and dedicate a wallet to transfer funds if the wallet activity is dormant for a stipulated time.(dead man’s switch). If a wallet owner became deceased, their funds would automatically be sent to a beneficiary, rather than being lost forever.
- Gas Abstraction: Instead of users paying gas in ETH, requiring a constant ETH balance, users could pay gas in any ERC -20 token(DOGE).
- Batch transactions: Account Abstraction helps in batch transactions which helps to reduce gas fee.
- Account Recovery: Account Abstraction helps users to recover their accounts easily if they lose the keys.
- Account Abstraction helps users to pay gas for their friends.
Wallets that are adopting account abstraction:
1.Ambire wallet
- ArgentHQ
- Safe
4.KromatikaFI
5.Instadapp
6.myBravos
7.Soulwallet_eth
8.patch wallet
9.PlenaFinance
Final conclusion:
The concept of account abstraction is a new technology that could bring a better way to DeFi. It will make users to enjoy DeFi especially in terms of management of private keys. The headache of losing or misplacing one’s private keys is gone with this new technology. Hopefully, more wallets will be developed that adopts this technology.