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.

It's funny watching CT singing praises of L2s after years of bashing the rollup-centric roadmap, but to me the very framing of L2s being a result of the rollup-centric roadmap is misleading. L2s exist not because of any top-down roadmap -- they emerged naturally due to a combination of 1) Ethereum's core technical properties, and 2) market demand. In other words, short of ceasing to be itself, Ethereum could not have stopped L2s from existing even if it wanted to. Credits must go to the EF for accelerating the success of rollups by pursuing the rollup-centric roadmap, but we must not get the cause and effect wrong -- the rollup-centric roadmap was a reaction to the emergence of rollups, not the cause of it. (note that I will be using the terms "rollup" and "L2" interchangeably for readability, even though they are not technically the same thing) At its core, a rollup is an off-chain program that posts its input data and commits its state to the L1, alongside a smart contract "verifier" that can verify the state transitions. If you examine this definition, you can derive the core technical properties that a L1 must have for L2s to exist: - L1 must allow for posting data, so that input data and state commitments can be posted. - L1 must support a general programming environment, so that verifiers can be implemented. But most L1s, including alt L1s like Solana and Sui, have these technical properties, so it's worth asking why we don't see rollups flourishing in those ecosystems. This is because Ethereum also has a set of other properties that no other L1s have: - Ethereum is maximally decentralized, which makes its block space 1) credibly persistent (i.e. you can believe that Ethereum will last forever), and 2) widely accessible. This enables rollups built on Ethereum to inherit its persistence and accessibility, giving credence to the idea that rollup users can enjoy high-performance execution without giving up the benefits of decentralization. - To achieve maximal decentralization, Ethereum runs a very large validator set, which makes Ethereum blocks expensive and slow to produce. The high gas price and latency of Ethereum blocks therefore lead to market demand for cheap and fast block space, a void that rollups are perfectly positioned to fill. - As a direct result of the decentralization, Ethereum has become the best home for on-chain liquidity, simply because people want their liquidity to sit where it can 1) last forever, and 2) be maximally accessible. Therefore, L2s building on Ethereum do not have to bootstrap their liquidity from scratch, but rather can funnel Ethereum's liquidity into the rollup via trustless canonical bridges. - As another consequence of decentralization, Ethereum is capture-and-censorship-resistant. But sometimes, capture and censorship are actually desired features, in which case they are known as regulation and compliance. So market also demands L2s because they can be regulated, since Ethereum itself cannot be. In short, for as long as Ethereum keeps embracing decentralization, it will be the best home for L2s. As Ethereum builders, our job is to preserve and enforce Ethereum's core decentralization properties, while creating and improving technologies such as blobs and interop to facilitate the growth of highly scalable L2s. Ethereum and L2s will help each other win. Let's build towards it.