Account Abstraction

Why Account Abstraction

• limtations of EOAs

  • can only sign txns

  • only support one elliptic curve (secp256k1)

  • difficult seed phrase management

  • no txn batching - gas is expensive

• multi-sigs on L1

  • e.g. gnosis safe

  • cant start or sign txns

  • second class citizen on ethereum

  • limited support and flexibility

• goal of account abstraction (4337) is to make smart contract wallets first class citizens

  • customized signature verification (can use different elliptic curves)

  • transaction bundling (multicall)

  • paying fees with non-native tokens

  • payment delegation

• differences between AA on Ethereum and Starknet

  • ethereum: application layer, starknet: protocol layer

  • both support custom signatures

  • fee delegation: ethereum has paymaster smart contract, starknet has metatransactions

• signature verification and tx execution logic defined as a smart contract

• process of having to sign multiple transactions to conduct a single function (e.g. swap) exposes user to potential MEV attacks & other inefficiencies

• multicall on starknet

  • multiple steps (user operations) as a single transaction

  • create a bundle with all req. txns, and execute entire bundle at the same time in one block

• with AA, user accounts are smart contracts

• to deploy a smart contract, you need to pay gas fees

• but to pay gas fees you need a user account

• how does one deploy a user account if you dont have a user account to pay gas fees?

• solution: counterfactual deployments

  1. calculate the address off-chain

  2. send funds to the address

  3. deploy your user account

  4. starknet OS deducts gas fees