Hello Brillionnaires ! Ready to revolutionize your crypto experience? Let’s dive into the world of account abstraction, a game-changing feature that’s making our smart wallet, Brillion, the best.
Understanding the new standard, in theory
Account abstraction brings significant enhancements, particularly in terms of user experience and adoption. This new feature emerged on the Ethereum blockchain following the introduction of the ERC-4337 standard.
The objective? To empower users to seamlessly leverage blockchain applications without the burden of wallet creation or the complexities of handling private keys.
To understand this revolution, let’s go back to basics. Indeed, to interact with Ethereum blockchain, you need an Ethereum account. There are two types : smart contracts and externally owned accounts (EOA).
- Smart contracts are deployed immutably on Ethereum and offer programmable functions that enable interaction with the blockchain. EOAs, on the other hand, allow users to interact with Ethereum and its smart contracts using wallets that act as interfaces with the blockchain.
Each externally owned account (EOA) is associated with a signatory. The signer is a cryptographic object consisting of a public key and a private key.
- The public key is used to identify the wallet, and it is this key that is used to receive tokens, for example. The private key, on the other hand, is used to sign messages (to validate transactions, for example) and prove that you are the legitimate holder of the wallet.
It is important to understand that the externally owned account (EOA) is closely linked to its signer. However, this exclusive relationship between the EOA and the signer can pose challenges in terms of user experience.
Because there is only one private key associated with an account, the loss of this private key results in a permanent loss of access to the account and therefore to the assets associated with it. Even managing the private key, using seed phrases for example, can seem complex to many users. So this development highlights the fact that this usage can limit mass adoption.
Understanding the new standard, in practice
Account abstraction offers an alternative to the current model of user accounts, in order to overcome the limitations mentioned above.
This standard involves transforming an externally owned account (EOA) into a smart contract. The latter reproduces the essential functionality of an account, i.e. validating and executing transactions, while offering additional programming and customisation capabilities.
In practice, this new type of smart contract is managed via smart contract wallets.
Thanks to this new standard, new uses cases are now possible :
- Social Login: Users can authenticate themselves using their social media accounts without the need to handle a private key.
- Security: Users can set up 2FA through various methods such as Google Authenticator or hardware wallets, adding an extra layer of protection to their wallet transactions.
- Recurring and Scheduled Payments: Users can set up payment streams with specified intervals and durations, allowing for automatic payments to be made to recipients over time.
- Withdrawal and/or Spending Limits: Users can set up withdrawal and spending limits for their accounts. Users can define maximum amounts or time-based restrictions to control the funds that can be withdrawn or spent from their wallets.
- Recovery: Users can restore their wallets and regain access to their assets in case of a lost or compromised private key using social for example.
These examples illustrate the practical applications of smart contract wallets across various functionalities.
This revolution is in progress, and several organisations are beginning to integrate this standard into their applications. And that includes us at Brillion!
In any case, it’s clear that this standard marks a significant milestone in the adoption of blockchain technology. Vitalik Buterin emphasized this in his blog last June. He noted that the transition to mass adoption would necessarily involve: the L2 scaling transition, the wallet security transition (smart contract wallet), and the privacy transition.
About Brillion
Brillion aims to seamlessly democratize web3 and let anyone catch opportunities of the future of finance. Brillion team is paving the way for a more connected, inclusive, and empowered global community. With a focus on self-custody, self-sovereign identity, privacy, banking integration and remittance payments Brillion’s smart-wallet is here to continuously empower billions of users to take control of their financial future.
