As
blockchain
teams
strive
for
the
holy
grail
of
mainstream
adoption,
making
crypto
wallets
easier
to
use
is
suddenly
at
the
top
of
the
agenda.
Ethereum
developers
have
been
moving
along
with
their
discussions
and
inclusions
of
certain
Ethereum
Improvement
Proposals
(EIPs)
for
the
blockchain’s
next
big
hard
fork,
Pectra.
One
of
the
proposals
that
has
drawn
both
support
and
concern
from
the
Ethereum
community
is
EIP-3074,
a
code
change
that
is
supposed
to
improve
the
user
experience
with
wallets
on
the
blockchain.
Ethereum
developers
have
tackled
issues
in
the
past
that
would
make
the
user
experience
with
wallets
easier,
and
have
deployed
features
that
unlocked
newer
capabilities.
But
now,
developers
are
pushing
to
make
the
experience
even
easier,
and
enshrined
in
the
blockchain.
This
new
change
is
supposed
to
allow
a
specific
type
of
wallet,
externally
owned
accounts
(EOAs),
to
be
more
programmable,
by
allowing
smart
contracts
to
authorize
them.
Paradigm
Chief
Technology
Officer
Georgios
Konstatonopolous
said
on
X
that
EIP-3074
“is
a
big
deal.
Wallet
UX
will
10x.”
Currently
on
Ethereum,
there
are
two
types
of
wallet
accounts:
EOAs,
which
are
the
most
popular,
like
MetaMask
and
Coinbase
wallet,
and
smart
contract
wallets,
like
Argent
and
Safe.
Users
of
EOA
accounts
are
given
a
pair
of
keys
–
a
public
one
and
private
one
–
while
smart
contract
accounts
are
wallets
that
are
controlled
by
code.
The
problem
with
EOAs
comes
down
to
human
error;
if
you
lose
a
private
key
to
an
EOA
account,
there
is
no
help
desk
or
key
recovery
process
that
can
help
you
regain
access
to
your
funds.
Previous
proposals,
like
ERC-4337,
have
aimed
to
make
EOAs
easier
to
use,
a
concept
known
as
account
abstraction
(AA),
which
allows
users
to
recover
their
crypto
with
smart
contract
features.
EIP-3074
is
another
step
in
this
type
of
innovation,
delegating
transaction
capabilities
to
smart
contracts.
A
key
component
of
the
proposal
is
to
allow
users
to
batch
transactions
together
and
have
them
sign
off
on
it
once.
Other
features
include
having
third
parties
sponsor
users’
transaction
fees,
so
decentralized
applications
(dapps)
can
for
instance
cover
the
gas
costs
for
their
users.
The
proposal,
created
as
far
back
as
October
2020,
also
allows
for
users
to
sign
transactions
that
were
submitted
by
a
different
party
–
for
example,
signing
transactions
from
a
different
interface,
or
signing
them
offline.
The
authors
are
Sam
Wilson,
Ansgar
Dietrichs,
Matt
Garnett
and
Micah
Zoltu,
according
to
the
document.
The
key
difference
between
EIP-3074
and
ERC-4337
is
that
“the
former
focuses
on
getting
all
the
benefits
of
execution
abstraction,
and
the
latter
focuses
on
getting
all
the
benefits
of
account
abstraction
on
all
EVM
chains
but
in
a
non-native
way
that
is
less
efficient,”
Ethereum
Foundation
developer
Yoav
Weiss
writes.
“Both
are
steps
to
get
some
of
the
benefits
of
full
native
account
abstraction.”
Community
pushback
While
many
in
the
community
showed
their
support
for
the
proposal,
others
have
cautioned
moving
forward
with
this
over
security
concerns
with
the
batched
transactions
feature.
Lukas
Schor,
the
co-founder
at
Safe
that
has
advocated
for
ERC-4337
and
for
Ethereum
wallets
to
implement
full
account
abstraction,
voiced
concerns
that
while
this
proposal
does
move
in
the
right
direction,
he
fears
the
EIP
lacks
“any
clear
pathway
to
full
AA
and
has
a
net-negative
impact
on
AA
adoption.”
The
co-founder
of
Argent
wallet,
Itamar
Lesuisse,
also
posted
on
X
that
EIP-3074
might
be
a
serious
security
concern,
writing
that
it
allows
“a
scammer
to
drain
your
entire
wallet
with
a
single
off-chain
signature.
I
expect
this
will
be
a
major
use
case.”
Mudit
Gupta,
chief
information
security
officer
at
Polygon
Labs,
also
had
security
concerns,
calling
for
wallets
to
“ban
EIP-3074
MAGIC
signatures
on
a
per
wallet
basis.”
“For
security
reasons,
I
do
not
want
to
expose
my
cold
wallets
to
AA
batching,”
Gupta
added.
