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Ethereum and Base have ended their joint effort to create a unified account abstraction standard, with Ethlabs researcher Derek Chiang confirming the collaboration broke down the previous week. The two networks will now pursue separate proposals: EIP-8141, or Frame Transactions, for Ethereum’s mainnet, and EIP-8130 for Base. While both chains share goals around gasless transactions and passkey wallets, their underlying priorities differ sharply. Ethereum emphasizes censorship resistance, privacy, and long-term security, while Base focuses on scalability, configurability, and compliance features for enterprise use. The split places additional burden on wallet providers and application developers, who must now bridge fragmented standards across chains.
Key Elements
The push to unify account abstraction across Ethereum’s mainnet and its most prominent Layer 2 network has collapsed, with both sides now pursuing separate technical standards after weeks of negotiations failed to bridge a widening philosophical gap.
Derek Chiang, a researcher at Ethlabs, confirmed the split in a series of posts on X dated September 14, stating that the collaborative effort between Ethereum Improvement Proposal 8141, known as Frame Transactions, and Base’s EIP-8130 broke down the previous week. The two networks will now implement different account abstraction standards independently.
“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,” Chiang wrote.
Account abstraction is a blockchain design concept that lets smart contract-controlled accounts behave like externally owned accounts, enabling features such as gasless transactions, passkey wallets, and more sophisticated authentication methods. Both Ethereum and Base had identified these capabilities as priorities, but their underlying motivations diverged sharply.
Ethereum’s Layer 1 developers emphasized censorship resistance, privacy, and long-term security for the settlement layer. Their proposals center on transaction formats that support post-quantum signature aggregation, underpinning standards like ERC-4337, EIP-7701, and the recently drafted EIP-8141. The goal is an account model extensible without chain-level permission, reflecting Ethereum’s decentralization ethos.
Base, developed by Coinbase, took a different path. The network requires a technical architecture that scales efficiently and supports programmable compliance controls for commercial and enterprise use. Its approach is embodied in the Tempo Transactions standard and EIP-8130, both tailored for high-throughput environments where clear distinctions between permitted and restricted actions matter.
Engineers from both teams spent weeks evaluating technical options Every pathway examined would have required one chain to significantly adjust its core goals, a compromise neither side was willing to accept
The divergence was foreseeable. Base and Ethereum developers had previously relied on shared standards such as EOA accounts and EIP-1559 transactions, which allowed wallets and applications to function seamlessly across both platforms. But evolving requirements around compliance, scalability, and security gradually widened the gap until further collaboration became unfeasible.
The table below summarizes the key differences between the two approaches:
| Chain | Standard | Priority | Compliance Focus |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ethereum L1 | EIP-8141 (Frame Transactions) | Censorship resistance, privacy, security | Low |
| Base | EIP-8130, Tempo Transactions | Scalability, configurability | High |
Note: Priorities and compliance focus reflect the stated goals of each chain’s development teams as described by Chiang.
Ethereum’s account abstraction work is part of the broader Hegotá upgrade, currently scheduled for 2027, which aims to make AA a native feature of the protocol. Chiang is among the proposal’s authors.
What this means for developers
The breakdown in coordination shifts additional burden onto wallet providers and application builders, who will now need to bridge fragmented standards across chains. While end users may not notice the underlying differences if wallet teams successfully abstract away the complexity, the development workload will increase.
Chiang outlined two possible paths for the ecosystem. The first involves creating new coordination processes that invite broader input from network stakeholders, particularly those building on Layer 2. Currently, most technical decision-making is centralized within the All Core Devs process, which consists primarily of Ethereum client developers.
The second option is to accept ongoing fragmentation and focus on building wallets capable of managing multiple transaction standards across chains. This approach would shield end users from complexity by handling integration work within wallet applications.
Chiang indicated a preference for the latter, suggesting that the ability to adapt to evolving standards across networks could give wallet developers a competitive edge. He expects capable teams to navigate the challenges successfully as each chain continues to innovate independently.
The split does not preclude all future coordination. Ethereum L1 and Base may still collaborate in areas that do not require either side to compromise on core priorities. Previous episodes in Ethereum’s history have demonstrated that the ecosystem can balance independent innovation with shared infrastructure, and the evolution of EIP-8130 and EIP-8141 will be closely watched for their impact on wallet interoperability and cross-chain user experiences.
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Source: finance.biggo.com