Crypto glossary
Account abstraction
Account abstraction lets crypto wallets work as programmable smart contracts, enabling features such as gas sponsorship, batched actions and social recovery.
Ethereum has traditionally had two kinds of account: externally owned accounts, controlled by a single private key, and contract accounts, run by code. Account abstraction blurs that line so a user's wallet can follow custom rules written in code: who may sign, how fees are paid, which spending limits apply and how access is recovered if a key is lost.
ERC-4337, live on Ethereum mainnet since March 2023, introduced smart accounts without changing the base protocol, using a separate pool of user operations and contracts called paymasters that can cover gas for users. EIP-7702, part of the Pectra upgrade in May 2025, lets an ordinary address delegate to smart contract code, bringing some of these features to existing wallets.
Smart accounts improve usability but add contract risk: a bug in the wallet code or a malicious delegation can expose funds. Since EIP-7702, phishing that tricks users into signing a delegation to a drainer contract has become a known attack.
Example
With a smart account, a user could approve a token and swap it on a DEX in a single click, while the app's paymaster covers the gas so the user does not need to hold ETH.
