Bitcoin is meant to be boring, Ethereum is breaking things
The new ERC-4337 is improving user experience for Ethereum and is meant to change its mainstream image.
Bitcoin Block 780,261
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Ethereum has silently made a leap when it comes to enhancing user experience. With the introduction of account abstraction in the EIP-4337 has been proposed in September 2021. It has been silently included in the protocol as a smart contract instead of a hard fork making it a seamless feature in the code. It comes as a hailed surprise at the ETHDenver’s WalletCon event on March 1. Leading developers including Weiss and Vitalik have a part of the innovative development.
What this request for comment does is introduce the concept of account abstraction where two types of accounts are now possible. One is the externally owned account (EOA) and contract accounts (CA). IN the case of EOAs, the user is responsible for creating the public and private key pairs and is solely responsible for their security. When he loses the private key, access to funds is lost. This is what makes user friendliness somewhat cumbersome. However, with this feature introduced, a new type of account springs up.
These accounts i.e. contract accounts are dependent on code and math like a smart contract on the blockchain. These can be verified and accessed through other simpler means like two-factor authentication or biometric techniques. This is possible by introducing another alternate mempool, a waiting area for transactions, allowing for a separate inclusion of transaction for ERC-4337-specific validations. The payment of fees before the transaction makes it free from censorship or biasness form a central actor. The verification logic will also be implemented by these wallets different from EOAs where only transaction data is implemented. Verification depends on the user in the latter case.
According to a Chainalysis report, up to 23% of all bitcoins in circulation (or around 3.79 million BTC) could be lost forever because of forgotten keys.
This is a serious thorn in the hand when it comes to user adoption. People are just too lazy figuring out how their wallets work or the amount of complexity that comes in running their own node.
My take:
People in developed nations don’t need bitcoin. They have a seamless transaction network. It’s easy to make a bank account even through some taps on their phone. They are included in the financial system.
The people actually needing the decentralized and secure nature of bitcoin are the ones in developing nations and they can only shift to it only if user friendly UI is possible.
We can learn from Ethereum this way. At least they are breaking things. What we can do is learn from their mistakes and then extract the best things and work perfectly towards integrating them in bitcoin.
Most people cannot afford losing half of their value in bitcoin if they entered this year. If Ethereum is providing preservation of value through stablecoins, what’s wrong in that. People in lower areas are making use of it. You, in your comfy area, have to understand their pain.
Move fast, break things. In the ends the spectators clap. But the prudent ones, they learn from it and pick up the remains.
Hope you liked my take.