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Ethereum L1 and Base Split Over Native Account Abstraction

This will force wallets and dApps to build bridging layers or pick incompatible transaction formats, risking deeper technical divergence between the base layer and fast L2s.

Overview

  • Developers confirmed the joint effort to unify account abstraction ended on Monday, Sept. 14, with Ethlabs founder Derek Chiang saying Base and Ethereum will pursue separate standards.
  • Base will advance EIP-8130 and is testing it on its vibenet devnet while Ethereum L1 continues work on EIP-8141, known as Frame Transactions, with both remaining active drafts in the EIP registry.
  • The proposals share goals such as gasless flows, passkey wallets, and batching but differ on mechanics: EIP-8130 requires explicit authenticators so nodes can pre-determine validation work, while EIP-8141 breaks transactions into programmable calls and prioritizes extensibility and post-quantum paths.
  • Wallets, node implementers, and dApp teams now face practical fragmentation because an app built for EIP-8130’s assumptions on Base may behave differently on Ethereum mainnet if EIP-8141 ships as drafted.
  • The split highlights a larger tension between L1 priorities like censorship resistance and privacy and L2 priorities like scalability and compliance, and it shifts near-term coordination toward tooling and governance decisions that will shape cross-chain compatibility.