Onchain Culture's Big Level Up

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The Ethereum community’s push for better UX via account abstraction just took its biggest leap forward yet.

That’s because EIP-7702, a highly anticipated proposal designed to unlock smart account powers for every wallet, just went live today with the Pectra upgrade.

This mechanism is poised to be a major boost for Ethereum’s onchain culture scene in the years ahead, so let’s break down the basics and highlight what to watch going forward.

What is EIP-7702?

For context, Ethereum supports two main types of accounts: externally owned accounts (EOAs), which are used for basic wallets, and smart contract accounts, which are programmable and can run complex transaction sequences.

EOAs are simple and great for basic sends and signs, but they lack flexibility. In contrast, smart contract wallets unlock richer possibilities, but until now using them typically required migrating your assets into a new account.

That said, EIP-7702 changes the game by letting any EOA temporarily act like a smart contract. This means users can tap into advanced operations on demand but without abandoning their main wallet or migrating assets to a new account.

Under the hood, EIP-7702 works by letting EOAs delegate control to smart contract code by referencing a pre-deployed contract address within a transaction’s authorization data.

That might sound confusing at first, but this setup basically just means that every regular Ethereum wallet can now mimic the powers of smart contract accounts.

This design is flexible, allowing EIP-7702 to be 1) composable with existing smart contract patterns, and 2) to play nicely with other standards like ERC-4337 (account abstraction via an alternative mempool) and ERC-6551 (NFTs as smart accounts).

Better UX for onchain culture

There are various ways to approach account abstraction, but what's special about EIP-7702 is that it brings smart functionality to all EOAs.

These new and far-reaching capabilities have hugely beneficial implications for the Ethereum ecosystem's onchain culture projects, most of which are becoming increasingly dependent on slick UX. These EIP-7702 capabilities include things like:

• ⛽ Sponsored gas, so you can onboard to apps easily thanks to projects or wallets fronting your gas costs.
• 🪙 Custom gas tokens, so you can pay for transactions with stablecoins or other ERC-20s instead of ETH, offering flexibility.
• 🛒 Bundled transactions, so you can skip multi-step approval sequences and run complex onchain operations with one click.
• ✅ Flexible signing schemes, so your regular wallet can authenticate with WebAuthn or other standards and not just raw private keys.
• 📌 Native social recovery, so you can set up a "guardians" system to ensure you never lose access to your regular wallet's private keys.
• 🔑 Support for session keys, so you can grant apps limited, time-bound access to your wallet, which is great for trying new projects without exposing all of your assets.

As you can imagine, these pillars have incredible potential for onchain culture.

Imagine a creator marketplace where artists can list NFTs, split collaborator payments, and claim royalties in a single transaction.

Or an onchain game where you can play via session keys and pay gas in USDC or have your transactions sponsored altogether.

Or a social app where you can delegate permissions to your alt while ensuring it can only spend up to 10% of your main wallets funds, etc.

What's even better is that these utilities aren't abstract concepts, they're available for use as of today!

For example, consider how Privy, the embedded wallet provider used across dozens of culture apps like Blackbird, Crypto: The Game, OpenSea, and Zora, is already offering day one support for EIP-7702.

This is just one integration vector, but it allows many apps to immediately let their users opt into smart account features without rebuilding their UX flows. As more integrations come online, EIP-7702 has a good chance of becoming ubiquitous across crypto's various culture niches.

What comes next?

Is this the beginning of the end of wallet sprawl in the Ethereum ecosystem?

Right now, many people manage multiple wallets for different use cases, e.g. one for storing assets, another for experimenting with onchain games, etc.

But if every EOA can temporarily act like a smart contract account across Ethereum and L2s, users will increasingly not have to split their identity or funds across accounts.

Also, much of the crypto UX friction today stems from the limitations of EOAs, like multi-step transactions and gas costs. With EIP-7702 improving onboarding prospects, the Ethereum community is primed to see an explosion of new casual, culture-focused apps.

Session keys, custom signing schemes, and delegated logic open the door to new formats for onchain interaction, too. Imagine an onchain game mechanic where players delegate powers to non-player characters (NPCs), or an NFT marketplace where bids can auto-expire per custom logic.

All in all, Ethereum is now a more expressive, user-friendly canvas for culture. EIP-7702 has blurred the line between basic wallets and smart accounts, empowering everyone onchain with tools that were once the domain of advanced contract setups.

For developers, this means fewer compromises between UX and decentralization. For creators, it means more expressive interactions and programmable ownership without adding onboarding complexity.

In the meantime, look for more projects to integrate this powerful new account abstraction standard, and keep tabs on its early adoption with this Dune dashboard. A new smart wallet era is beginning, and best of all? You don't need a new wallet for it!

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