Account Abstraction

The ERC-4337 standard brought account abstraction without changes to the base protocol. It introduces the UserOperation concept: a signed intent that flows through an alternative mempool and is executed by a Bundler, which fronts the gas in ETH. On top of that, paymasters can sponsor transactions (gasless UX for the user) or charge gas in other tokens.

With the Pectra hard fork (7 May 2025), EIP-7702 lets an existing externally-owned account delegate its logic to a designated smart contract, bringing account abstraction to any user without migrating wallets or changing address. It is the key piece for use cases like social recovery, action batching, signature-free sessions, multi-sig or stablecoin payments.

Wallets already using account abstraction: Safe (enterprise multi-sig), Argent (social recovery) and Coinbase Smart Wallet, backed by bundler and paymaster infrastructure. For a business, account abstraction notably reduces onboarding friction, because it brings the on-chain experience closer to that of a conventional financial app.