The Ethereum Blockchain has made a major development in account security by releasing a feature called “account abstraction.” This key enhancement makes it much easier to recover crypto from someone who has lost their online wallet private keys.
The new standard, formerly known as ERC-4337, was deployed using a smart-contract called EntryPoint. This was confirmed by Yoav Weiss, a security officer at the Ethereum Foundation. People familiar with the matter reported to CoinDesk that the contract had already undergone a security audit.
The Ethereum Foundation will be officially announcing the development at the ETHDenver Conference at a WalletCon event at 5 pm local time (0:00 UTC) on Wednesday. Several infrastructure providers have already expressed plans to support ERC-433 through their services.
Part of the reason why ERC-4337 was so easily implemented was due to the fact that the upgrade was made through the addition of a smart contract. This avoided the complicated process of making changes to Ethereum’s underlying programming. The plan is to eventually include account abstraction into the main protocol.
The contract can be used on any EVM chain, and can also be deployed wherever EMV-compatible. Co-founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, tweeted about the advantages of ERC-4337 back in October.
“We’re narrowing down an actual path for account abstraction, something we’ve always wanted but have not actually managed to have,” Buterin tweeted.
Account abstraction turns users’ wallets into smart contracts accounts for improved security and easier recovery of lost funds.
Ethereum has announced that its long-awaited upgrade to account abstraction, known as ERC-4337, has been deployed and tested. This innovation is seen as a major step forward in making cryptocurrencies more user-friendly, as it will enable users to open two types of accounts – External Owned Accounts (EOA) and Contract Accounts (CA).
EOAs are the most commonly used type of accounts, and they are the type that users will have if they open MetaMask or Coinbase Wallet. They give users a pair of public and private keys, with anyone able to send encrypted crypto to the account using the public key. However, only the account owner or the person with access to their private keys can initiate transactions.
CAs, on the other hand, are accounts that are controlled by code rather than private keys. This means that they can’t initiate transactions themselves. The issue with EOAs is that, if the user loses their private keys, there is no way for them to get access back. Account abstraction helps to tackle this problem by merging EOAs with CAs, and introducing built-in mechanisms that can help to re-gain access.
One such mechanism is a social recovery system, which allows multiple users to access the account again if the user loses their private keys. It is also possible to create custom designs known as “multisig wallets”, which require multiple users to sign off on transactions in order to add another layer of security.
