Ethereum, Coinbase-Backed Base Diverge on Next-Gen Wallets

A major setback has occurred in the development of layer-2 (L2) blockchains on Ethereum. The effort to agree on how the next generation of crypto wallets should work has been abandoned by Coinbase-backed Base and Ethereum's EIP-8141 Frame Transactions. This comes after attempts to produce a shared account-abstraction standard failed to reconcile their different requirements.

The split leaves Ethereum advancing its Frames proposal while Base pursues a separate design for native account abstraction, potentially forcing wallets to accommodate different transaction architectures across networks that have historically shared much of the same account and transaction experience. Both proposals aim to make wallets more programmable, supporting features such as gas sponsorship, passkeys, and flexible authentication.

Ethereum core developer Matt Garnett said divergence among L2s is inevitable due to market competition forcing them to introduce features more rapidly than Ethereum L1 can. This pressure has led to competing account-abstraction designs, with EIP-8141 introducing Frame Transactions that break a transaction into programmable calls and EIP-8130 taking a more structured approach.

Crypto lawyer Gabriel Shapiro said the split could make the case for layer-2 networks as an inherently beneficial strategy for Ethereum harder to sustain. He argued that L2s are great for the industry, but may not directly strengthen the L1's product or economics, and that Ethereum needs to rely less on the 'halo effects' of businesses such as Base and Robinhood.