Ethereum and Base Split on the Future of Smart Wallets

Ethereum and Base have abandoned their effort to build a shared standard for account abstraction, the technology meant to make crypto wallets easier to use. Developers on both sides confirmed this week that the joint work, known as Frames, has ended, and each network will now pursue its own design.

The two networks are not starting from scratch. Account abstraction already runs at scale through ERC-4337, the current standard, which according to industry data has seen more than 40 million smart accounts deployed and over 100 million user operations processed across Ethereum and its layer-2 networks. The dispute is over the next step: building account abstraction directly into each network rather than bolting it on.

Ethereum's core developers are advancing EIP-8141, called Frame Transactions. The proposal introduces a new transaction type that splits a single transaction into a sequence of programmable steps, or frames, of up to 64. One frame handles signature checks and fee authorization, while others carry the actual calls. The goal is to deliver account abstraction natively, without the separate mempool and off-chain bundler infrastructure that ERC-4337 requires. EIP-8141 was published in February and currently holds Considered for Inclusion status for the Hegota network upgrade planned for late 2026, meaning it is a candidate rather than a confirmed feature.

Base, the Ethereum layer-2 network built by Coinbase, is continuing with EIP-8130, a design aimed at Base and other OP Stack chains. It is paired with a separate mechanism the team refers to as Tempo Transactions.

Despite the divergence, both proposals target the same set of user-facing improvements. Each is designed to let people pay gas fees without holding ETH, sign in with passkeys rather than seed phrases, use more flexible authentication methods, and receive sponsored transactions in which a third party covers the cost. For everyday users, the two standards would feel broadly similar.

The break comes down to priorities. According to developers involved, the two groups aligned early but drifted apart as their goals hardened. Ethereum's design leans toward censorship resistance, privacy, and security, values long associated with the base layer. Base is optimizing more aggressively for scale, customization, and compliance, reflecting its position as a high-throughput network courting mainstream and institutional use.

That split leaves an open question for the people who build wallets. If both proposals reach production, wallet developers may need to support two distinct native transaction formats, one for Ethereum layer-1 and another for Base. Account abstraction was promoted in part as a way to unify and simplify the wallet experience. A forked standard risks doing the opposite, fragmenting how transactions are constructed across an ecosystem that shares the same underlying stack.

Neither proposal is finalized. EIP-8141 must still clear Ethereum's client-testing and inclusion process, and EIP-8130 remains under active development on the Base side. For now, the two networks are proceeding in parallel, betting that their differing priorities are better served by separate standards than by a compromise neither side wanted.

Same ecosystem. Different priorities.