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. I want to share some reflections on this collab and on the future of the EVM. For a long time, the EVM has been a unifying force between L1 and L2s. Thanks to a standard account model (EOA) and a standard transaction type (EIP-1559), users have been able to enjoy their wallets working seamlessly across EVM chains. Similarly, a AA standard shared across L1 and L2s would ensure a consistent multi-chain UX for smart accounts, including post-quantum (PQ) accounts which we will eventually all use. As the crypto industry matures, however, L1 and L2s are starting to diverge in the values they provide and the use cases they target: - For the L1, it's all about CROPS -- censorship-and-capture resistance, open source, privacy, and security. In short, Ethereum L1 wants to be the most decentralized programmable settlement layer of the world, which is what makes it a good base layer for L2s in the first place. - For L2s, it's all about scaling, customization, and compliance -- things that commercial and enterprise use cases demand, and that the L1 does not provide. These diverging needs have pushed the shared layer -- the EVM -- to its limit, and AA proved to be the breaking point. While L1 and L2s both value core AA use cases such as gasless transactions and passkey wallets, they differ sharply in what these features must comply with: - For the L1, AA transactions must be uncensorable, private, and quantum-resistant, which call for a transaction type optimized for PQ signature aggregation and privacy protocols, and an account model that can be freely programmed and extended by developers without permissions from the chain. These needs lead to AA standards such as ERC-4337, EIP-7701, and now EIP-8141 aka Frame Transactions. - For L2s, AA transactions must work at high scale, and they must be legible such that the protocol can enforce clear rules about what kinds of accounts/transactions are permitted vs not. These needs lead to AA standards such as Tempo Transactions and now EIP-8130 by Base. With the AA collab, the authors of 8130 and 8141 tried to define a shared standard that can work for both L1 and L2s. While we identified a number of technical solutions, they all required one side or the other to compromise at least a little bit on their core goals. But ultimately, Ethereum wanted to be the best version of Ethereum, and Base wanted to be the best version of Base, and while both sides acknowledged the benefits of ecosystem interoperability, it was ultimately secondary to the need for each chain to achieve their core goals. So separate ways we went, putting the burden on wallets to deal with the fragmentation that ensues. Now, just because we ended up with fragmentation doesn't necessarily mean it was a bad outcome. If reducing fragmentation comes at the cost of homogenizing chains to the point that they fail to solve problems for the users they care about, that would not be a price worth paying. While I was initially sad that the collab did not come to a successful conclusion, I took solace in the fact that both Ethereum and Base are now free to innovate on AA to the maximal extent in accordance with their own visions, unshackled from the need to accommodate the other side. If they execute well, and if the wallet community can bridge over the fragmentation, we may well end up with the best possible UX for the end users. So where does that leave us -- the broader Ethereum community including Ethlabs -- if we want to continue pushing for a consistent UX across EVM chains? I see two paths forward: - We can establish a coordination mechanism that encompasses more stakeholders than ACD itself (where only L1 client devs have voting powers), to govern shared L1<>L2 resources such as the EVM. That way, L2s can participate in shaping the EVM, as opposed to having to accept whatever the ACD decides, or being forced to fork if they don't like the decision (such as in this case with Base). - We can accept that fragmentation of the EVM and wallet UX across L1 and L2s is inevitable due to their conflicting needs, and dedicate our resources to building wallets and applications that can abstract over the differences. Indeed, the collab was an exercise in the first path -- we invited Base, Arbitrum, and other stakeholders to directly influence how native AA shapes up for the L1. While it ultimately failed in this case, I feel a better outcome could've been achieved if we had established a dialog between both sides way earlier, as opposed to well after L1 core devs had rallied around Frames. On the other hand, I also learned from this exercise that some differences are unavoidable, and indeed it would be counterproductive to overly pursue interoperability at the cost of differentiation. In other words, we sometimes just gotta let the chains cook. For that reason, I've also become more bullish about the second path -- building wallets and applications that can speak the native transaction types of each chain, and hide the complexity from users through UX abstractions. This puts a lot of onus on the wallet/application developers of course, but on the bright side, it's also an opportunity for wallets/applications to stand out and differentiate, by competing to provide great UX across chains despite the underlying fragmentation. Ethereum is the art of staying together while remaining different. We must accept that chains will succeed by innovating, and innovations will naturally result in differences. On the other hand, we must never give up on dialogue when we can achieve interoperability without compromising core product goals. As Ethereum and crypto grow to eat the world, the push and pull between innovation and collaboration will only intensify, and it's up to all of us -- builders across L1 and L2s, applications and wallets -- to determine whether diverse innovations will split Ethereum apart, or make it thrive as one.

TLDR: Frames (8141) was just SFI-ed, but it was only meant to signal that Ethereum WILL ship AA in Hegota. It does NOT mean that Frames as written, or even the final EIP number, are set in stone. In the ACDE I was pushing against making the SFI decision now, given that the public pushbacks against Frames and support for 8130 have not been sufficiently addressed. So I felt SFI-ing Frames right at this moment would send the wrong signal that ACD doesn't care about community feedback. However, ACD moderators later clarified that SFI-ing Frames is intended to only signal the ACD's commitment to ship AA, not to Frames's specific content or even the final EIP number. Therefore, this decision does NOT affect the ongoing collaboration between 8130 and 8141, where we are trying to either: - Settle on a shared transaction type that is both flexible and future-proof enough for the L1, and is friendly for the scaling needs of L2s. - Or, if the above is not achievable, then at least ensure that 8130 accounts can be built on top of Frames, so that a 8130 account can share the same address across L1 and L2s, even if it has to use two different transaction types under the hood. In any case, Ethereum WILL ship native AA in Hegota, because Ethereum L1 and L2s deserve the best UX in Web3. Let's get this done.

We are collecting AA people like infinity stones Jokes aside, Mislav is one of the most original thinkers I know. His pioneering work on chain abstraction (via Kluster), AA (via PREP aka rootless accounts), and interfaces (via 8211 aka smart batching) have served as inspirations for ZeroDev and many other teams. I look forward to seeing him accelerate our innovations at Ethlabs.

I'm on my way back from Ethlabs's first 5-day offsite, which was also the first time I met my colleagues in person. Wanted to share some impressions of my colleagues, in no particular order: - @fradamt being the most research-y among us, i honestly sort of expected him to be a weakling (sorry), but he turned out to be the most athletic among us, beating me handily in ping pong and carried me in spikeball. he was also surprisingly (why was it surprising?) tuned in on social events, politics, history, things of that nature. really enjoyed chatting with him - @_julianma is the youngest among us at only 24, but it really doesn’t feel that way. his social polish and maturity are just astounding. i have the highest respect of him and would trust him to run any project/org of any size. and he was a genuinely kind person, taking me to kayaking seeing i had missed an earlier kayak session. - @binji_x -- honestly before i met binji my mental model of a comms person is a social media bro who's very good at posting funny jokes on twitter but not much else. while binji is indeed very good at posting funny tweets, he really surprised me with his depth of thoughts on a variety of topics, from the theory of comms to the vision of crypto. even though he's very young, i learned that he's been through a lot in life, which i won't recap here for privacy reasons but it explained why he's so mature for his age. - @adietrichs -- since ansgar has this annoying habit of not using slack, before the offsite i felt like i knew him the least out of everyone at ethlabs, and a part of me was wondering why out of such an amazing group of individuals he was chosen as the ED. but the reason became very apparent after just a few days. in short, ansgar is a natural leader. he's charismatic, opinionated but in a way that doesn't shut out other opinions, and a natural at strategic thinking. he's also a real intellectual that reads very widely and can converse with you in depth about almost any topic. we are lucky to have him as the face of Ethlabs - @barnabemonnot -- barnabe is very soft-spoken, which wasn't very apparent over Zoom but quite striking in person. he's a very calming presence and sometimes you don't really notice him, but whenever he speaks everyone listens carefully because he's always very insightful. He's an economist by training and you can tell by how he attacks every problem by dissecting it into subcomponents and examining their interactions. He also brought me one of the best gifts i've received which is a "Blockchain for Babies" book for my baby. - @casparschwa is very hard to read. i still don't really get him. he's the tallest guy among us but he rarely speaks so you often forget about him. but what's really interesting is that he speaks in such a way that, even though he speaks very slowly, it somehow always silences the room and draws everyone's attention to him. he doesn't really try to lead, but when he does he naturally has the ability to rally the group. in short, for some reason you can't help but take him very seriously. but on the other hand, he's also genuinely very funny. he cracks terrific jokes which are all the more funny with his german accent and slow speaking cadence. anyways, very strange guy; will need to study him more at the next offsite - @joshrudolf came in half way through the offsite so i only spent 2 days with him. he's also a bit of mystery to me because he's super quiet, but somehow he manages all our most important relationships with the top orgs/people in crypto, and he does an amazing job at it. when you watch these people interact with josh, it's clear that they respect him a lot. how such a quiet personality manages to be so good at building relationships is still a mystery to me My favorite part about working at Ethlabs is that it feels like everyone is at least 10x better than me in some critical dimensions. Super happy to have such an amazing group of guys to learn from.

Excited to share that I'm joining @ethlabs_org! Over the course of founding @zerodev_app and later joining @Offchain, I've come to deeply appreciate the efforts it takes to turn great technologies into useful products. AA for example was great tech, but it took great embedded wallets like Privy/Dynamic/Crossmint (all of which powered by ZeroDev) to make gasless transactions the norm for consumer applications. Ethlabs excites me because I see it as the GTM arm for Ethereum technologies. There's a treasure trove of great Ethereum tech such as real-time proving, light clients, fast confirmations, etc., but their adoption has significantly lagged behind their potential, which is a great shame. For example, it's common even today for popular bridges to verify L1 deposits via multisig validators, when a broader adoption of light clients would've saved us from billions of dollars in hacks. At Ethlabs, I intend to work with my talented colleagues to create great Ethereum tech, while working with builders to incorporate the tech into products people actually use. I won't be selling you ideologies -- I will be convincing you, on technical and product merits, that Ethereum tech solves the needs for YOUR business and YOUR users. And if it doesn't, I will work with my colleagues to make the tech better. To many this may be a bear market. To us at Ethlabs, this is the best time to make Ethereum win. Let's fucking go.