Ethereum and the developers of Base have ceased to push for a unified account abstraction standard. Due to difficulties in coordinating core objectives between EIP-8141 and EIP-8130, the two networks will proceed with their respective native transaction designs independently.
This means that if both proposals ultimately make it into the production environment, wallet developers may need to support both native transaction formats simultaneously. For ordinary users, the front-end experience may not immediately split, but the underlying compatibility costs will increase significantly.
Differences focus on design objectives.
Both proposals aim to simplify the wallet usage process, such as allowing users to initiate transactions without the need for ETH, and to support authentication methods like mobile phone passkey. However, the two parties do not agree on the priority of the underlying design aspects.
Ethereum places more emphasis on censorship resistance, privacy, and security; Base focuses more on scalability, customizability, and compliance requirements. Developers stated that although various technical compromise solutions were discussed, one party always needed to make concessions in their core goals, and ultimately no unified standard was reached.
Ethereum continues to advance EIP-8141
Ethereum will continue to advance EIP-8141, which is also Frame Transactions, and plans to incorporate it into the Hegot upgrade. The Ethereum Foundation's protocol team listed this proposal as "must-deliver" earlier this month.
The idea of EIP-8141 is to split a transaction into a set of programmable frames. One of these frame can be responsible for verifying the sender, another can authorize the payment from the gas account, and then the subsequent frame will execute the operation requested by the user.
This structure allows for a separation between the account that initiates the transaction and the account that pays the fees. The application can pay on behalf of gas, or users can use other assets to complete the payment, while the verifiers still collect network fees using ETH.
Base Promotes EIP-8130 Alone
On the Base front, separate development of EIP-8130 will continue. This solution consists of a new type of transaction and on-chain Keystore, which is used to record recognized signatories and authentication contracts for accounts.
Under this design, the authentication method used will be clearly indicated, and the network can determine which verification process to employ before executing the wallet code. The approach of Base is more suitable for high-throughput scenarios and also places greater emphasis on custom authentication and compliance adaptation.
The wallet needs to handle two sets of formats.
After the two parties go their separate ways, the most direct impact will be felt by wallet and infrastructure providers. If both EIP-8141 and EIP-8130 are officially deployed, developers will need to handle two sets of native transaction formats.
However, developers also believe that a technical fork does not necessarily lead directly to a split in user experience. As long as the wallet layer is well-adapted, users can still enjoy a relatively consistent interaction experience. From an ecological perspective, the path forward for the abstraction and nativization of accounts has shifted from a unified standard to parallel evolution.
