Account Abstraction on Fantom
Account Abstraction is an upcoming upgrade to the Fantom network that aims to address some of the major drawbacks of the current account infrastructure on EVM networks.
The upgrade will enhance the dApp experience on Fantom and enable social recovery options for wallets.
Types of accounts
On EVM networks, including Fantom, there are two types of accounts:
EOAs, or External Owned Accounts, are the typical accounts that users create to interact with the Fantom network, better known as wallets, e.g. MetaMask. A wallet is controlled by a private key that belongs to the wallet owner and is recoverable through a seed phrase, both of which are long strings that are difficult to remember.
These accounts are programs that execute directly on the network, better known as smart contracts. As they cannot initiate transactions themselves, a wallet is required to send a transaction to interact with the smart contract.
In their current form, EOAs possess some major drawbacks, such as poor user experience and a high risk of human error. The phrase “not your keys, not your crypto” is particularly relevant: if a user loses their private key or their seed phrase to their EOA, their funds are lost forever. Additionally, many users store their keys online, increasing the risk of theft by malicious actors.
What is Account Abstraction?
The Account Abstraction upgrade seeks to address these issues by transforming all wallets into smart contracts, allowing EOAs to become authorities that can instruct the smart contracts, acting as wallets, to initiate actions. For example, an EOA can instruct a smart contract to perform swaps or send FTM. An EOA can be an email address and password, social authentication, face ID, and so on.
Account Abstraction improves the user experience by allowing users to log in using methods with which they are already familiar from Web2 to interact with dApps on Fantom. Social recovery becomes possible as well; if a user loses their password, they can go through a password reset process similar to traditional platforms.
Since a wallet under the Account Abstraction implementation is a smart contract, many other functions become available. Most importantly, economic abstraction becomes viable, which is the ability for users to pay transaction fees in tokens other than FTM.
Account Abstraction is a significant step forward in enhancing the functionality and usability of the Fantom ecosystem. Follow us on Twitter or join our Telegram to stay informed on the upgrade’s progress!
