EthCC: Vitalik Buterin highlights account abstraction challenges on Ethereum   

According to Buterin, “paymasters” could allow users to pay for gas fees with the coins they are transferring.

Speaking on July 18th at the Ethereum Community Conference (EthCC) event in Paris, Vitalik Buterin outlined the potential of account abstraction to bring billions of users to Ethereum while noting the implementation challenges, including compatibility with existing technologies, such as biometrics and integration with existing wallets.

On Ethereum currently, users transferring ERC-20 tokens are required to have Ether to pay the transaction fees. However, with “paymasters,” account abstraction extensions on Ethereum, users can pay gas fees with the transfer tokens, and DApps can sponsor transactions. In addition, Buterin spoke about signature aggregation, with which developers could compile signatures, saving money and data, especially for rollups.

“This is actually especially a big deal on rollups because in a rollup a big or on because a big part of the size of a transaction is the signature on a roll-up.”

The Ethereum co-founder noted that, with account abstraction, developers still have to surmount challenges— which includes needing an Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) to upgrade current Ethereum externally-owned accounts — normal user accounts — into smart contracts and ensuring the protocol works similarly in layer-2 solutions. 

Barring the challenges facing account abstraction, Buterin remains optimistic about its future, stating, “Account abstraction has made a lot of progress, and I’m excited about all of the progress that we’ll continue making in the future.”

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