Beyond the Basics: Account Abstraction 101

Gelato Team

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Mar 21, 2023

It’s no secret that the current UX and onboarding is difficult in most web3 apps. We can’t onboard the first billion people to web3 if we are relying on users paying for gas and never losing their private keys.

This is where Account Abstraction comes in. Imagine a world where you can:

Recover your funds if you lose your private key
Interact with web3 apps without needing to purchase crypto or pay for gas
Have others manage your funds based on rules that you define straight from your wallet

All of this is what Account Abstraction promises to do, and this is why many people believe it will be the next big thing for Ethereum and make web3 apps more usable for mainstream users.

Why haven’t today’s wallets adopted Account Abstraction?

In order to answer this question, we must first understand that there are 2 different types of accounts on Ethereum:

Externally Owned Accounts (EOAs)
Smart Contract Accounts (SCs)

Externally Owned Accounts

EOAs (e.g. MetaMask & Ledger) are controlled by private keys and are the most common accounts used today. They can be generated for free and reused across all EVM chains with the same address. However, EOAs come with major drawbacks:

If you lose your private key, your funds are gone forever.
You can’t delegate execution of transactions to third parties (e.g. to pay gas fees on your behalf).
Poor UX: EOAs are clunky and difficult for mainstream users.

Smart Contract Accounts

SCs (e.g. Safe) are controlled by code instead of private keys. Think of them like programmable wallets — digital locks that you can configure however you want. They unlock powerful features such as:

Social recovery (log in with Google, Facebook, etc. if you lose access)
Gasless transactions (delegating gas payments to others)
Automated fund management (programming your wallet to follow custom rules)

SCs represent a major UX upgrade for web3 users.

So why is Account Abstraction still not the default in web3?

While SCs have existed for a while, they still need external entities to run off-chain computation and EOAs to initiate transactions. To unleash their full potential, SCs need an off-chain automation network that can execute logic and transactions on behalf of users, abstracting blockchain complexities away entirely.

How is Gelato implementing Account Abstraction?

SCs + Gelato = Account Abstraction!

Gelato provides the missing piece of infrastructure to make SC-based wallets practical and powerful:

Gelato Automate — automatically interact with smart contracts based on conditions (e.g. buy an NFT if floor price drops below X).
Gelato Relay — sponsor transactions on behalf of users, allowing them to use apps without paying gas or even holding ETH.

Learn more about Account Abstraction

Dive deeper into the concept with Vitalik Buterin’s guide to EIP-4337, the proposal that sets the foundation for Account Abstraction on Ethereum.

About Gelato

Gelato is a Web3 Cloud Platform empowering developers to create automated, gasless, and off-chain-aware Layer 2 chains and smart contracts. Over 400+ web3 projects rely on Gelato to power millions of transactions across DeFi, NFTs, and gaming.

Gelato RaaS: Deploy your own ZK or OP L2 chain with native Account Abstraction and Gelato middleware baked in.
Web3 Functions: Connect smart contracts to off-chain data & computation with serverless cloud functions.
Automate: Automate your contracts with time or condition-based triggers.
Relay: Give your users gasless transactions with a simple API.
Account Abstraction SDK: Built with Safe, combining Gelato’s gasless infra with the most secure smart contract wallet.