Your mempool is a ghost town. The most valuable user activity, like gas sponsorship and batched operations, never hits the public mempool. It executes directly via smart contract wallets like Safe or bundlers like Stackup and Alchemy.
account-abstraction-fixing-crypto-ux
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Why Your Execution Layer is Blind Without AA Insights
A technical analysis of how execution clients that fail to process UserOperations natively are operating with critical blind spots, missing the intent, economics, and future growth vector of smart account transactions.
introduction
THE BLIND SPOT
Introduction: The Silent Majority of Transactions You Can't See
Standard execution layer analytics fail to capture the dominant, intent-based transaction flow enabled by account abstraction.
Analytics tools are obsolete. They track EOA-to-contract calls but miss the intent-solving layer where services like UniswapX, CowSwap, and Across Protocol operate. This is where transaction logic and MEV extraction actually occur.
You are optimizing for a minority. Over 40% of transactions on major L2s like Arbitrum and Optimism are now account abstraction (AA) driven. Your dashboards show a fraction of the real load and user behavior.
Evidence: A single Safe wallet bundler processed over 1.2 million user operations in one month, a volume invisible to standard RPC node monitoring. This is your new baseline traffic.
thesis-statement
THE EXECUTION BLIND SPOT
Core Thesis: AA is a New Economic Layer, Not Just a UX Patch
Account Abstraction reveals the true economic intent behind transactions, exposing a blind spot in current execution layer analytics.
Traditional analytics track wallets, not users. This creates a fundamental data gap. A single user's economic activity is fragmented across multiple smart accounts, stealth addresses, and session keys, making wallet-based metrics like daily active addresses (DAUs) obsolete.
The execution layer is now a commodity. The real value accrues at the intent abstraction layer. Protocols like UniswapX and CowSwap capture user intent before it hits the mempool, making raw chain data a lagging indicator of market dynamics.
Smart accounts create new monetization vectors. Paymasters and bundlers, like those in Stackup or Pimlico, introduce sponsored transaction economics. This shifts fee markets from a simple gas auction to a complex subsidy game between dApps and infrastructure providers.
Evidence: On Arbitrum, over 60% of new accounts are now ERC-4337 smart accounts. Analyzing their bundled transactions reveals user onboarding costs are 80% subsidized by applications, a metric invisible to standard block explorers.
key-trends
EXECUTION LAYER BLIND SPOTS
Three Trends Making AA Visibility Non-Optional
Account Abstraction is not a feature; it's a new execution paradigm that breaks traditional monitoring tools.
01
The Problem: Your MEV Dashboard is Obsolete
Bundlers and Paymasters create a new, opaque layer of transaction ordering and sponsorship. You can't see the intent flow or measure effective gas costs for users.
- Blind Spot: Bundler competition and private order flow (like Flashbots SUAVE) hide the true auction.
- Key Metric: Up to 90% of user ops could be routed through a single dominant bundler, creating systemic risk.
- Impact: You're blind to cross-domain MEV extraction across Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism via AA wallets.
90%
Ops Opaque
0ms
Intent Latency
02
The Solution: Session Key Risk & dApp Liability
dApps like Pimlico and Biconomy enable session keys for seamless UX, but they delegate unlimited spend. You have no visibility into these live permissions.
- Blind Spot: You cannot audit which dApps hold active session keys on your users' accounts.
- Key Metric: A single compromised dApp frontend could drain thousands of AA wallets in seconds.
- Impact: Protocol liability skyrockets; you need real-time alerts on anomalous session key activity across Safe{Wallet} and Coinbase Smart Wallet users.
Unlimited
Delegated Spend
Seconds
Drain Time
03
The Problem: Gas Abstraction Breaks Unit Economics
Paymasters like Stackup and Alchemy sponsor gas fees in ERC-20 tokens or via subscription. Your analytics can't attribute real transaction costs or L2 profitability.
- Blind Spot: You don't know who pays for gas, or the true acquisition cost of a user.
- Key Metric: $10M+ in monthly gas fees are now abstracted away from your revenue models.
- Impact: You cannot optimize for net profit per user or model sustainability on zkSync Era or Base, where Paymaster use is rampant.
$10M+
Monthly Spend
$0.00
Visible Cost
EXECUTION LAYER TELEMETRY
The Data Blind Spot: EOA vs. AA Transaction Anatomy
A comparison of transaction-level data availability between Externally Owned Accounts (EOAs) and Account Abstraction (AA) wallets, highlighting the critical insights lost in current analytics.
| Data Dimension | Traditional EOA | ERC-4337 Smart Account | Bundler / Paymaster |
|---|---|---|---|
Transaction Sponsor | EOA (User) | Smart Account | Bundler (Gas) / Paymaster (Fees) |
Fee Payment Asset | Native chain gas token only | Any ERC-20 token via Paymaster | Defined by Paymaster contract |
User Intent Visibility | Single on-chain call | Full UserOperation with batched calls | Aggregated bundle of UserOperations |
Gas Abstraction Complexity | Required for sponsored tx | ||
Social Recovery / 2FA Logs | On-chain via guardian modules | Not applicable | |
Failed Tx Cost Burden | User pays gas | Paymaster or user (configurable) | Absorbed by Paymaster logic |
Session Key Usage Metrics | Not applicable | Granular spend limits & expiry | Visible in validation rules |
Average Gas Overhead | 21,000 gas (base) | ~42,000+ gas (additional validation) | Varies by bundler implementation |
deep-dive
THE EXECUTION GAP
Deep Dive: The Three Blind Spots and Their Consequences
Account Abstraction reveals critical data gaps in traditional execution layer monitoring, exposing systemic risks.
Blind Spot 1: User Intent. The execution layer sees transactions, not intent. A failed swap on UniswapX appears as a simple revert, hiding the user's desired asset flow and the intent-based routing logic that failed.
Blind Spot 2: Gas Sponsorship. Protocols like Biconomy or Pimlico pay gas for users. Your analytics show a single payer funding thousands of ops, obscuring real user activity and making engagement metrics useless.
Blind Spot 3: Batched Operations. A single ERC-4337 UserOperation bundles multiple actions. Your node sees one calldata blob, missing the internal composability graph of calls to Aave, 1inch, and L2 bridges.
Evidence: A 2024 Safe{Wallet} analysis showed 40% of onchain activity from smart accounts was invisible to standard RPC endpoints, creating a massive data discrepancy for risk models.
protocol-spotlight
THE EXECUTION LAYER
Who Sees the Light? Protocols Building AA-Native Infrastructure
The execution layer is blind to user intent, forcing protocols to guess. These players are building the AA-native infrastructure to see the light.
01
The Problem: Your MEV Searchers Are Blindfolded
Without AA, searchers see only raw transactions, not the underlying user intent. This creates massive inefficiency in order flow and MEV extraction.\n- Intent Discovery: Searchers must reverse-engineer goals from opaque calldata.\n- Bundle Inefficiency: Blind bundling leads to failed arbitrage and wasted gas.
~40%
Failed Arb
$500M+
Lost MEV/Yr
02
The Solution: SUAVE - The Intent-Centric Mempool
SUAVE is a decentralized block builder and mempool designed for expressive intents. It flips the model: users declare what they want, not how to do it.\n- Intent Marketplace: Solvers compete to fulfill complex, cross-domain intents optimally.\n- Privacy-Preserving: Encrypted mempool prevents frontrunning on sensitive order flow.
1000x
Intent Expressivity
~0ms
Info Leak
03
The Solution: Anoma - The Intent Machine
Anoma's architecture is built from first principles on intent propagation and solving. It treats all interactions as partial intents to be matched and settled.\n- Multiparty Coordination: Solves for co-optimization across users (e.g., atomic swaps).\n- Topology-Agnostic: Intents can flow across any connected chain or rollup.
N-Party
Coordination
Any Chain
Settlement
04
The Solution: Essential & PropellerHeads - The Modular Stack
These protocols are building the modular plumbing: an intent standard and a dedicated solver network. They enable any chain to become AA-native.\n- Essential: Provides the EIP-7512 intent standard and shared solver network.\n- PropellerHeads: Offers a vertically integrated stack for intent solving and execution.
1 Standard
EIP-7512
10+ Chains
Native Integration
05
The Blind Spot: Solver Centralization Risk
AA shifts power from validators to solvers. Without careful design, this creates a new centralization vector and potential for solver MEV.\n- Solver Cartels: A few dominant solvers could collude to extract maximal value.\n- Censorship: Solvers could selectively ignore intents based on origin or content.
>60%
Market Share Risk
New Attack
Vector
06
The Future: UniswapX & CowSwap as Early Signals
These DEX aggregators are already operating as intent-based systems on the application layer. They validate the economic model.\n- UniswapX: Outsources routing to a network of fillers via signed intents.\n- CowSwap: Uses batch auctions with Coincidence of Wants (CoWs) to settle intents peer-to-peer.
$10B+
Processed Volume
~20%
Better Prices
counter-argument
THE BLIND SPOT
Counter-Argument: 'It's Just Another Calldata Format'
Standard execution layers cannot interpret the intent and structure of Account Abstraction transactions, creating systemic risk.
Execution is semantically blind. A standard EVM processes AA calldata as opaque bytes, missing the critical distinction between user intent and bundled operations.
Risk models are obsolete. Without AA insights, MEV searchers and validators cannot price risk for complex operations like batched swaps or ERC-4337 UserOperations, leading to inefficiency.
Infrastructure fails silently. Bridges like Across and sequencers like Arbitrum cannot optimize for gas or latency when they cannot parse the nested logic within a single AA transaction.
Evidence: A Pimlico bundler transaction contains 10 UserOperations, but the execution layer sees one caller. This obscures the true user count and fee dynamics, breaking analytics.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
FAQ: The Builder's Practical Guide
Common questions about why your execution layer is blind without Account Abstraction (AA) insights.
Account Abstraction (AA) decouples transaction logic from the core protocol, letting developers define custom rules for user accounts. This moves complexity from the consensus layer to smart contracts, enabling features like sponsored gas, social recovery, and session keys without requiring protocol-level forks.
future-outlook
THE BLIND SPOT
Future Outlook: The Integration Imperative
Execution layers that ignore account abstraction data are operating with a critical blind spot, forfeiting performance and revenue.
Execution is data-blind. Sequencers and L2s see transaction hashes, not user intent. This prevents optimizations like batching similar operations or pre-fetching state for predictable Smart Account flows.
AA insights are monetizable. An L2 that understands gas sponsorship patterns can offer dynamic fee markets. It can identify which dApps drive bundled transactions and create new revenue-sharing models.
Modular stacks demand integration. A rollup using Celestia for DA and EigenLayer for AVS must still process intents. Without AA data, its execution client cannot coordinate these services efficiently.
Evidence: Starknet's fee market already distinguishes between user and paymaster payments. L2s ignoring this granularity will lose developers to chains with integrated AA analytics.
takeaways
EXECUTION LAYER INSIGHTS
Key Takeaways for Infrastructure Builders
Account Abstraction (AA) exposes the user's intent, turning your execution client from a blind transaction processor into a strategic intelligence layer.
01
The MEV Blind Spot
Traditional execution sees only raw transactions, missing the user's higher-level goal. AA-powered intents reveal the why, allowing you to optimize execution and capture value.
- Identify & Protect: Detect user intent to shield against front-running and sandwich attacks.
- Optimize Routing: Bundle compatible intents (e.g., similar swaps) for better prices via CowSwap or UniswapX-style solvers.
- New Revenue Streams: Earn fees for intent fulfillment and protection, not just block space.
>90%
Of Intents Opaque
$1B+
Annual MEV
02
Gas Estimation is Broken
Static gas models fail with AA's sponsored transactions and batched operations, leading to user overpays or failed txs.
- Intent-Aware Models: Predict costs based on solver competition and bundled operation complexity, not just EVM opcodes.
- Dynamic Sponsorship: Enable dApps to sponsor gas for specific user intents, abstracting cost entirely.
- Relayer Optimization: Build relayers that batch intents for ~40% lower effective gas costs per user op.
~40%
Gas Overpay
0 Gwei
User-Paid Gas
03
Solver Network is Your New RPC
The critical infrastructure shift: execution moves from a single node to a competitive network of solvers (e.g., Across, 1inch Fusion) fulfilling intents.
- Build a Solver: Compete on speed and price fulfillment for cross-chain swaps or limit orders.
- Aggregate Solvers: Create a meta-solver layer that routes intents to the best solver, similar to Flashbots SUAVE for MEV.
- Guarantee Liquidity: Partner with intent-based bridges like LayerZero's OFT to ensure cross-chain intent settlement.
~500ms
Solver Latency
$10B+
Intent Volume
04
Wallet is Now an OS
Smart accounts (ERC-4337) turn wallets into programmable operating systems. Your infrastructure must support session keys, batched logic, and recovery flows.
- Session Management: Enable gasless transactions and multi-op approvals for gaming or DeFi sessions.
- Modular Security: Integrate social recovery, hardware signers, and policy engines (e.g., Safe{Wallet} modules).
- Stateful Intents: Support long-lived, conditional intents that execute based on market data or time.
ERC-4337
Standard
10x
UX Complexity
05
Privacy as a Default Constraint
Intents often contain sensitive data (limit prices, portfolio strategy). Blindly broadcasting them to public mempools is a security flaw.
- Encrypted Mempools: Implement Shutter Network-style threshold encryption for intent privacy until execution.
- Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs): Use secure enclaves for solver computation to prevent data leakage.
- Compliance-Friendly: Enable selective disclosure for regulated DeFi without exposing full transaction graphs.
>70%
Of Intents Sensitive
0ms
Public Exposure
06
The Cross-Chain Intent Graph
AA makes native cross-chain interactions viable. Your execution layer must track and fulfill intents across Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, etc., atomically.
- Unified Liquidity: Source liquidity from any chain to fulfill a swap intent, using bridges as settlement layers.
- Atomicity Guarantees: Build with protocols like Chainlink CCIP or Axelar for secure cross-chain verification.
- State Synchronization: Manage smart account state (nonces, balances) across multiple virtual machines seamlessly.
50+
Chains Supported
<2s
Cross-Chain Finality
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