Developers launch account abstraction via new ERC-4337 token standard
Ethereum developers announced the surprise deployment of the ERC-4337 token standard at ETHDenver’s WalletCon event on March 1st.
Ethereum Foundation security researcher Yoav Weiss broke the news, noting that the code successfully passed a security audit by OpenZeppelin. ERC-4337 was deployed as a smart contract, meaning no major changes to the core Ethereum protocol were required to roll out the new token standard.
ERC-4337 is now available on all blockchain networks and offers compatibility with the Ethereum Virtual Machine – Ethereum’s core smart contract engine.
ERC-4337 was proposed in September 2021 by several of Ethereum’s top researchers, including Weiss and Vitalik Buterin. Transactions with ERC-4337 require specialized validators and are processed by an alternative mempool to other Ethereum transactions.
The token standard enables what is known as “account abstraction,” which allows wallets to act as programmable smart contracts and paves the way for users to recover lost private keys.
Leading wallet apps like MetaMask and Coinbase offer users external accounts where only a person who controls the private keys for an account can initiate transactions.
In contrast, contract account wallets are programmed through smart contracts and offer greater flexibility in managing private keys and transactions, meaning users can program different mechanisms by which their private keys can be retrieved.
Account abstraction could allow users to ditch the common practice of backing up a bunch of words on a piece of paper and open up new ways of backing up wallets. For example, users could set up two-factor authentication to access a wallet via biometrics, or program wallets with multiple signatures that allow shared access to a single account.
Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s chief scientist and co-founder, also said that ERC-4337 enables a fully decentralized fee market for smart contract wallet operations.
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