Hi, I’m Junghyun Colin Kim, CEO of BaeRae. In this blog, I write about blockchain, wallets, and how the financial infrastructure we live in is being shaped and transformed — from my own perspective. You can find more posts on blockchain, wallets, and the structural changes in digital assets at https://baerae.substack.com.
In the previous post, I covered how Account Abstraction went from a failed series of proposals to its first working reality with ERC-4337.
This post picks up from there.
If ERC-4337 laid the foundation, the standards that emerged after 2023 have been filling in the actual user experience built on top of it.
Rather than focusing on the technical details, I want to look at what these changes actually mean for users — what became possible, and what’s still being worked out.
ERC-4337 made smart accounts real.
But once developers started adding features to them, a problem quickly emerged.
Teams building social recovery, session keys, and spending limits all did so in their own way — and their implementations didn’t talk to each other. A social recovery module built for one wallet didn’t work in another.
For users, this created situations like:
“This wallet supports social recovery, but the DeFi app I use only works with the other wallet.”
People had to switch wallets just because of feature compatibility. The ecosystem fragmented fast.
ERC-7579 was built to solve this. Released in December 2023, it was a joint effort between Biconomy, ZeroDev, Rhinestone, and OKX.
The core idea is simple: standardize the features added to smart accounts as interoperable modules. Any wallet that follows this standard can run any module, regardless of which team built it.
Think of it like LEGO. Before ERC-7579, LEGO A and LEGO B used incompatible brick sizes. ERC-7579 unified the spec.
Here’s where it stands today. Major services that have adopted ERC-7579 include:
Biconomy (Nexus) — native support
ZeroDev (Kernel v3) — fully rebuilt on ERC-7579
OKX Wallet — co-authored the standard, implemented across products
Safe — supported, but requires a separate adapter module (not fully native)
Rhinestone, Etherspot, thirdweb, Pimlico — supported
Gemini Wallet — launched in August 2025 using Biconomy Nexus as its base
What this means in theory: switch wallets without losing your settings. No vendor lock-in. Add new features by installing a module.
That said, reality is a bit more nuanced.
ERC-7579 is still in Draft status — it hasn’t been formally finalized as an Ethereum standard. Developers who’ve built on it in production describe the ecosystem as “half-finished”: registry systems that don’t always work as documented, SDKs that require API keys for what should be permissionless operations. Cross-wallet module portability is theoretically possible, but not always seamless in practice.
Still, major projects have adopted it as a de facto industry standard, and the ecosystem is maturing. The gaps will narrow.
ZKAP currently references parts of the ERC-7579 interface, but our core validation logic is built around Passkey + ZK proofs — so we don’t support all modules out of the box. Compatibility with the broader ecosystem is something we’ll expand over time.
There’s one standard worth pausing on before moving forward.
Authenticating with a fingerprint or Face ID is second nature for most app users. What if that same biometric could sign an Ethereum transaction?
Technically, it was already possible. Smartphones use the secp256r1 (P-256) curve for signing. You could configure a smart account to use it as the signer.
The problem was cost.
Verifying a secp256r1 signature on-chain via a smart contract cost around 300,000 gas — tens of times more than a standard transaction. Completely impractical.
Before diving in, it’s worth explaining what a RIP (Rollup Improvement Proposal) is. While EIPs target the Ethereum mainnet, RIPs are a separate framework specifically for L2 rollups — allowing them to ship new features faster without waiting for mainnet consensus.
RIP-7212 was the first-ever RIP. It introduced a precompiled contract for secp256r1 verification, cutting the gas cost to 3,450 gas — a roughly 100x reduction. Polygon, Optimism, zkSync, and Arbitrum were quick to adopt it.
Then in December 2025, it finally came to Ethereum mainnet.
EIP-7951 was included in the Fusaka hard fork (December 3, 2025) as the mainnet version of RIP-7212. It patches security vulnerabilities found in the original while maintaining the same address (0x100) and interface, keeping it compatible with existing L2 smart contracts. Gas costs slightly higher at 6,900 gas, reflecting actual benchmark performance.
Passkey-based signing now works cheaply on both L2s and Ethereum mainnet. This is precisely why RIP-7212 and EIP-7951 are core infrastructure for what we’re building in ZKAP.
ERC-4337 had one uncomfortable reality.
To use a smart account, you needed a new address.
Your existing MetaMask address — the one you’ve used for years — couldn’t access smart account features without migrating to a brand new wallet. In practice, almost nobody does that.
In May 2024, Vitalik published a proposal to fix this: EIP-7702.
Here’s how it works.
When an EOA sends a transaction, it can declare: “I’m delegating execution authority to this smart contract for this transaction.” The EOA then behaves like a smart account for the duration of that transaction. The original address stays the same. The delegation can be revoked at any time.
It shipped with the Pectra hard fork in May 2025.
What this means for users: keep your existing MetaMask address and delegate execution authority to an AA smart contract to access batch transactions, gas sponsorship, and other features — without deploying a new wallet or moving assets.
But this delegation mechanism is a double-edged sword.
Just days after Pectra launched, on May 24, 2025, the phishing group Inferno Drainer exploited it. They tricked users into signing a delegation to a malicious contract through a phishing site disguised as Uniswap. Once signed, the malicious contract used batch transactions to silently drain the wallet’s assets. The damage: approximately $146,000. A single signature handed over execution authority for all future transactions.
The core lesson: the contract you delegate to must be safe. Always verify that the target contract is a trusted, audited implementation — and pay close attention to what you’re actually signing.
EIP-7702 significantly blurred the line between EOAs and smart accounts.
But structural limitations remain.
UserOperations still require a Bundler to process. If the Bundler is slow or unavailable, transactions slow down too. Everything still flows through a single EntryPoint contract.
EIP-8141 is the attempt to solve this at the protocol level.
It introduces a new transaction type called “Frame Transactions.” Instead of a single call, a transaction becomes a sequence of frames — verification, execution, and post-processing are handled directly at the protocol level. No Bundlers, no alt mempool, no EntryPoint contract.
On March 1, 2026, Vitalik wrote on X:
“Now, we finally have EIP-8141, an omnibus that wraps up and solves every remaining problem that AA was intended to address (plus more).”
Formal All Core Devs (ACD) discussions kicked off in January 2026. ACD calls are regular open meetings where Ethereum client developers — Geth, Nethermind, Besu, Reth, and others — discuss and reach rough consensus on protocol changes. They’re split into ACDE (Execution Layer) and ACDC (Consensus Layer).
The outcome was more complex than expected.
On March 27, 2026, EIP-8141 was assigned CFI (Considered for Inclusion) status — not confirmed as a Hegota headliner.
A headliner means “the fork cannot ship without this EIP.” CFI means “keep developing, but don’t tie the Hegota timeline to its delivery.” Vitalik pushed hard for it, but developers from Nethermind and Besu raised concerns about complexity and the risk of delaying the entire upgrade. The specific blocker: a DoS protection spec for VERIFY frame execution was not yet complete.
Hegota’s confirmed headliner is FOCIL (EIP-7805) — a censorship resistance mechanism for the consensus layer.
EIP-8141 remains under active development with CFI status and could still be included in Hegota. If not, it moves to the next upgrade — potentially late 2026, or 2027 at the earliest.
When it does ship, smart accounts become the default for every Ethereum wallet — no extra infrastructure, no additional costs, native support for batch transactions, gas abstraction, and post-quantum signatures from day one.
2016–2020 — EIP-86, EIP-2938, EIP-3074 Three attempts to change the consensus layer. All three failed.
2021–2023 — ERC-4337 Account abstraction at the app layer, no protocol changes needed. 40M+ smart accounts live today. ✅
2023–2024 — ERC-7579 Modular smart account standardization. De facto industry standard, widely adopted. ✅
2023–2025 — RIP-7212 / EIP-7951 ~100x gas reduction for Passkey-based signing. Live on major L2s and Ethereum mainnet (Fusaka). ✅
2024–2025 — EIP-7702 EOAs can delegate execution authority to smart contracts. Shipped in Pectra. ✅
2026– — EIP-8141 Native AA without Bundlers. CFI status — debate ongoing.
The story isn’t over.
Looking at the standards since 2023 through a user experience lens:
Already possible today
Biometric signing with Face ID or fingerprint (RIP-7212 / EIP-7951)
Smart account features on your existing MetaMask address (EIP-7702)
Features that follow you when you switch wallets (ERC-7579)
Coming soon
Smart accounts as the default for every Ethereum wallet, with no extra infrastructure (EIP-8141)
Think about how few people actually use a Web3 wallet today. The barriers — managing seed phrases, needing ETH for gas, complex multi-step signing flows — are disappearing one by one.
This is why all of this matters to us.
ERC-4337 created the smart account infrastructure. RIP-7212 and EIP-7951 solved the cost problem for Passkey-based signatures. EIP-7702 built a bridge for existing users. ERC-7579 ensures feature compatibility across wallets.
ZKAP is being built on top of all of this.
A wallet where you create an account with a Passkey instead of a seed phrase, verify assets with ZK proofs, and connect your bank account, CEX, and DeFi into a single interface.
The ten years of work that built this infrastructure is what makes ZKAP possible.
For more on blockchain, wallets, and the structural shifts in digital assets, visit https://baerae.substack.com. If you’d like to talk further or explore a collaboration, feel free to reach out anytime for a coffee chat — X, Telegram, or LinkedIn.
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