It is still unclear whether Vitalik's account abstraction proposal will be adopted

Author: Macauley Peterson, Blockworks; Translator: Wuzhu, Golden Finance

It’s unclear when Ethereum’s next major upgrade will hit the mainnet, with current estimates ranging from November this year to early 2025 — though the latter now seems more likely.

The first step in supporting the “Pectra” timeline is to finalize the specifications for all the Ethereum Improvement Proposals to be included.

While much of that work has been completed, Thursday’s meeting of core developers (ACD) uncovered a piece called “Pectra’s No. 1 unresolved specification issue,” EIP-7702: Setting an EOA account code for a transaction.

The proposal allows an externally owned account (EOA) — think of a regular wallet like MetaMask — to temporarily act as a smart contract for a single transaction. An EOA is an account controlled by a private key, while a smart contract is code that runs on a blockchain, in this case Ethereum.

EIP-7702 aims to merge some of the features of both for enhanced flexibility and security.

One example is gas-free transactions, where a dapp sets an EOA to allow a third party (such as an operator or sponsor) to pay transaction fees.

Initiated by Ethereum developers such as Vitalik Buterin in early May, the EIP is intended to replace a previous controversial attempt to enable similar functionality.

The upgrade is designed with an account-based abstraction future in mind, avoiding unnecessary complexity and ensuring further improvements to the user experience.

During the ACD call, developers discussed the integration challenges and potential risks associated with EIP-7702.

Sudeep Kumar of the Erigon team suggested an account-based revocation system that would “track template addresses that [users] revoke.”

Geth developer Lightclient suggested that such functionality could be implemented as an ERC rather than in the protocol.

Other developers have expressed concerns about the complexity of EIP-7702 and the potential for scope creep, depending on which version is ultimately adopted. Some developers have advocated for bringing in some of the functionality that was supposed to be replaced from the earlier EIP-3704.

But Safe co-founder Richard Meissner praised the simplicity of 7702, noting that it “has no on-chain impact, [so] you can deprecate it more easily.”

Marius van der Wijden from Geth expressed reservations about encouraging the use of one account as both a smart account and an EOA, and Meissner agreed.

“It feels very dangerous to have it both ways when it’s specified,” Meissner said.

The consensus reached at the meeting was to resolve these issues via the next ACD call to ensure timely implementation of Devnet 2 (the third of many small developer testnets).

The call was scheduled for July 4 (Independence Day), but all the U.S. developers in attendance said nothing would stand in the way of Ethereum’s progress.