Base and Ethereum Split on Account Abstraction, Producing Two Rival Standards
Base and Ethereum have ended their collaboration on native account abstraction standards, leaving two competing draft proposals in place and pushing cross-chain compatibility work to the wallet and application layer.
Base and Ethereum Split on Account Abstraction, Producing Two Rival Standards
Base and Ethereum have ended their collaboration on native account abstraction standards, leaving two competing draft proposals in place and pushing cross-chain compatibility work to the wallet and application layer.
The breakdown, confirmed by a developer familiar with the process, means the two networks are now pursuing divergent technical approaches to what had been a shared goal: replacing externally owned accounts (EOAs, the standard private-key wallet) with smart contract wallets at the protocol level. The split was confirmed as of September 14, 2026.
Account abstraction is one of Ethereum's oldest UX ambitions. The concept allows wallets to operate as programmable smart contracts rather than simple key pairs, enabling features like social recovery, gas sponsorship, and batched transactions. EIP-4337, ratified in 2023, established a mempool-based workaround that operates above the protocol layer. The current effort, sometimes called native account abstraction, aims to bake the functionality directly into the protocol itself, eliminating the relay infrastructure EIP-4337 requires. That deeper integration is where Base and Ethereum now disagree.
"The two draft proposals take different approaches to native smart accounts, potentially shifting cross-chain compatibility work to wallets and apps."
Unnamed developer
The practical consequence is significant. When L1 and L2 implementations share a common standard, wallets can present a consistent interface across chains and users move assets without friction. When they diverge, developers must write compatibility logic themselves, or users face inconsistent behavior depending on which network they are on. Base, built on the OP Stack and operated by Coinbase, processes a substantial share of Ethereum's L2 transaction volume, making its technical choices consequential for the broader network of applications that span both chains.
Competing implementations tested in live environments can surface tradeoffs that specification documents miss. Base's user base skews toward consumer applications where gas sponsorship and onboarding flows matter most, while Ethereum L1 carries a different mix of institutional and DeFi activity. Each chain optimizing for its own context is not inherently a failure. The divergence in account abstraction standards may foster innovation but complicates development, impacting wallet design and cross-chain interoperability. The tension between those two outcomes is real and unresolved.
The breakdown echoes a recurring pattern in Ethereum's scaling history. Different L2 teams have repeatedly developed divergent approaches to sequencing, data availability, and fraud proofs, with cross-chain standards emerging slowly and incompletely after the fact. The EVM-equivalence debate of 2022 and 2023 followed a similar arc: multiple teams announced competing compatibility claims, wallet developers absorbed the complexity, and users experienced inconsistencies for months before informal conventions settled. Native account abstraction is a more fundamental layer than those disputes, which raises the cost of a prolonged standards fight.
For wallet developers, the immediate question is whether to build toward one proposal, the other, or an abstraction layer that handles both. None of those options is clean. Building to one standard risks backing the wrong specification if the other gains adoption. Writing a compatibility layer adds engineering overhead and potential attack surface. The burden now sits squarely on the application layer, exactly where the original collaboration was meant to prevent it from landing.
