Ethereum & Base Split Over Account Abstraction Standards, Leaving Wallets To Adapt

• Efforts to develop a shared account abstraction standard have been abandoned by Ethereum and Base.
• The development of EIP-8130 and EIP-8141 will proceed independently.
• Ethereum places a high priority on security, privacy, decentralization, and resistance to censorship.
• Base prioritizes compliance, scalability, and customisation. Wallet developers may need to support various transaction types as a result of the split.

Ethereum and Base have ended efforts to develop a shared account abstraction standard after failing to agree on how the technology should balance decentralization, security, scalability and compliance.

The collaboration focused on two proposals: Base-led EIP-8130 and Ethereum’s EIP-8141, also known as Frame Transactions. Both projects remain under development and aim to give wallets more flexibility through features such as passkey authentication, gas sponsorship, transaction batching and custom account validation.

I’m sad to report that the AA collab between 8130 and 8141 (Frames) broke down last week, and Base and Ethereum are now going separate ways to implement different AA standards.

I want to share some reflections on this collab and on the future of the EVM.

For a long time, the EVM has been a unifying force between L1 and L2s. Thanks to a standard account model (EOA) and a standard transaction type (EIP-1559), users have been able to enjoy their wallets working seamlessly across EVM chains. Similarly, a AA standard shared across L1 and L2s would ensure a consistent multi-chain UX for smart accounts, including post-quantum (PQ) accounts which we will eventually all use.

As the crypto industry matures, however, L1 and L2s are starting to diverge in the values they provide and the use cases they target:

– For the L1, it’s all about CROPS — censorship-and-capture resistance, open source, privacy, and security. In short, Ethereum L1 wants to be the most decentralized programmable settlement layer of the world, which is what makes it a good base layer for L2s in the first place.

– For L2s, it’s all about scaling, customization, and compliance — things that commercial and enterprise use cases demand, and that the L1 does not provide.

These diverging needs have pushed the shared layer — the EVM — to its limit, and AA proved to be the breaking point. While L1 and L2s both value core AA use cases such as gasless transactions and passkey wallets, they differ sharply in what these features must comply with:

– For the L1, AA transactions must be uncensorable, private, and quantum-resistant, which call for a transaction type optimized for PQ signature aggregation and privacy protocols, and an account model that can be freely programmed and extended by developers without permissions from the chain. These needs lead to AA standards such as ERC-4337, EIP-7701, and now EIP-8141 aka Frame Transactions.

– For L2s, AA transactions must work at high scale, and they must be legible such that the protocol can enforce clear rules about what kinds of accounts/transactions are permitted vs not. These needs lead to AA standards such as Tempo Transactions and now EIP-8130 by Base.

With the AA collab, the authors of 8130 and 8141 tried to define a shared standard that can work for both L1 and L2s. While we identified a number of technical solutions, they all required one side or the other to compromise at least a little bit on their core goals. But ultimately, Ethereum wanted to be the best version of Ethereum, and Base wanted to be the best version of Base, and while both sides acknowledged the benefits of ecosystem interoperability, it was ultimately secondary to the need for each chain to achieve their core goals. So separate ways we went, putting the burden on wallets to deal with the fragmentation that ensues.

Now, just because we ended up with fragmentation doesn’t necessarily mean it was a bad outcome. If reducing fragmentation comes at the cost of homogenizing chains to the point that they fail to solve problems for the users they care about, that would not be a price worth paying. While I was initially sad that the collab did not come to a successful conclusion, I took solace in the fact that both Ethereum and Base are now free to innovate on AA to the maximal extent in accordance with their own visions, unshackled from the need to accommodate the other side. If they execute well, and if the wallet community can bridge over the fragmentation, we may well end up with the best possible UX for the end users.

So where does that leave us — the broader Ethereum community including Ethlabs — if we want to continue pushing for a consistent UX across EVM chains? I see two paths forward:

– We can establish a coordination mechanism that encompasses more stakeholders than ACD itself (where only L1 client devs have voting powers), to govern shared L1<>L2 resources such as the EVM. That way, L2s can participate in shaping the EVM, as opposed to having to accept whatever the ACD decides, or being forced to fork if they don’t like the decision (such as in this case with Base).

– We can accept that fragmentation of the EVM and wallet UX across L1 and L2s is inevitable due to their conflicting needs, and dedicate our resources to building wallets and applications that can abstract over the differences.

Indeed, the collab was an exercise in the first path — we invited Base, Arbitrum, and other stakeholders to directly influence how native AA shapes up for the L1. While it ultimately failed in this case, I feel a better outcome could’ve been achieved if we had established a dialog between both sides way earlier, as opposed to well after L1 core devs had rallied around Frames.

On the other hand, I also learned from this exercise that some differences are unavoidable, and indeed it would be counterproductive to overly pursue interoperability at the cost of differentiation. In other words, we sometimes just gotta let the chains cook. For that reason, I’ve also become more bullish about the second path — building wallets and applications that can speak the native transaction types of each chain, and hide the complexity from users through UX abstractions. This puts a lot of onus on the wallet/application developers of course, but on the bright side, it’s also an opportunity for wallets/applications to stand out and differentiate, by competing to provide great UX across chains despite the underlying fragmentation.

Ethereum is the art of staying together while remaining different. We must accept that chains will succeed by innovating, and innovations will naturally result in differences. On the other hand, we must never give up on dialogue when we can achieve interoperability without compromising core product goals. As Ethereum and crypto grow to eat the world, the push and pull between innovation and collaboration will only intensify, and it’s up to all of us — builders across L1 and L2s, applications and wallets — to determine whether diverse innovations will split Ethereum apart, or make it thrive as one.

— Derek Chiang | Ethlabs (@decentrek) September 14, 2026

Ethlabs researcher Derek Chiang said on X that discussions between the two sides broke down last week after developers could not agree on a design that satisfied both networks’ priorities.

Ethereum & Base Take Different Paths

Ethereum Layer 1 developers are prioritizing censorship resistance, privacy, security, openness and long-term resilience, according to Chiang. Base and other Layer 2 networks, meanwhile, need account abstraction that can support high transaction volumes while offering greater customization and clearer compliance controls.

“Ethereum wanted to be the best version of Ethereum, and Base wanted to be the best version of Base,” Chiang said.

The disagreement highlights a growing challenge for the Ethereum ecosystem. While the EVM has historically provided a common technical foundation across Ethereum and its Layer 2 networks, individual chains are increasingly developing features around their own users and use cases.

EIP-8141 & EIP-8130 Move Forward

EIP-8141 would make account abstraction a native part of Ethereum through programmable transaction frames. The proposal covers transaction validation, gas payment and execution while also supporting features such as key rotation, batch transactions and post-quantum security.

Base’s EIP-8130 takes a different route by introducing a new transaction type and an onchain keystore. The design supports custom authentication, transaction batching and gas sponsorship. Base has also tested the proposal on its Vibenet devnet.

Both standards aim to move beyond Ethereum’s traditional externally owned accounts and make wallets more programmable without requiring users to manage the underlying complexity.

Wallets Could Carry The Burden

The split could increase the workload for wallet developers and applications supporting multiple EVM networks. If both standards advance, wallets may need to support different native transaction formats across Ethereum and Base.

Chiang said the fragmentation does not necessarily represent a negative outcome. Instead, wallets and applications could eventually hide the technical differences by supporting each network’s native transaction format behind a unified user experience.

The Ethereum-Base split now leaves the ecosystem with two possible paths: stronger coordination around shared infrastructure or greater acceptance of technical differences between chains.

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