Why Cross-Chain AA Will Centralize Wallet Infrastructure

Cross-chain AA centralizes control. The technical complexity of managing smart accounts, gas payments, and security across heterogeneous chains like Ethereum, Solana, and Cosmos is prohibitive for most teams. This creates a natural moat for specialized infrastructure providers like Biconomy and Safe{Wallet}, who will become the default custodians of user experience and security.

The wallet becomes a service. The end-user wallet interface (e.g., a frontend) will decouple from the core smart account logic. Users will interact with a simple UI, while the heavy lifting—signature aggregation, cross-chain intent routing via LayerZero or Axelar, and gas abstraction—is handled by centralized relayers and bundlers.

Interoperability standards create oligopolies. While ERC-4337 and RIP-7212 enable permissionless innovation, the economic reality favors integration with a few dominant cross-chain messaging layers. Wallets that optimize for lowest latency and highest success rate will route user operations through the same centralized sequencer networks used by Across Protocol and Stargate.

Evidence: The Relayer Model. Today, over 60% of gas-sponsored transactions on Polygon are processed by a single relayer service. This pattern will replicate and intensify in a multi-chain AA world, where cross-chain state synchronization demands even greater capital efficiency and coordination.

Cross-chain state synchronization is expensive. Maintaining a consistent user identity and session keys across heterogeneous chains like Ethereum, Solana, and Arbitrum requires a persistent, low-latency off-chain service. This creates a natural moat for infrastructure providers like Safe, Biconomy, and Pimlico, who can amortize these costs across millions of users.

Intent-based transaction routing centralizes power. Wallets like Rabby and Brale that abstract gas and route user intents become the new market makers for block space. They will integrate with solvers from CowSwap, UniswapX, and Across, deciding which chains and bridges users interact with. This gatekeeper role consolidates liquidity and user flow.

The bundler market will oligopolize. Just as block builders like Flashbots and bloXroute dominate MEV extraction, cross-chain bundlers that can source liquidity from LayerZero and Circle's CCTP will achieve unbeatable economies of scale. Smaller players cannot compete on execution price or speed.

Evidence: Look at RPC providers. The market consolidated around Alchemy and Infura because running high-availability, multi-chain nodes is a capital-intensive commodity business. Cross-chain AA service layers are the next iteration of this dynamic.

Cross-chain AA centralizes relayers. The entity controlling the intent-solver network that fulfills cross-chain user operations becomes the de facto gatekeeper. This mirrors the centralization risks seen in intent-based bridges like Across and UniswapX, where solver networks control flow.

Wallet competition becomes infrastructure competition. Wallets like Safe, Biconomy, and Etherspot must now operate or subsidize global solver networks. This creates massive capital and operational overhead that only well-funded entities can sustain, eroding the permissionless ethos.

The network effect is absolute. A solver network with the deepest liquidity and most routes, akin to a LayerZero or Wormhole of intents, achieves unbeatable efficiency. Users and developers naturally consolidate on the dominant system, creating a protocol-level moat.

Evidence: The Solver market for CowSwap and UniswapX is already dominated by a handful of professional players. Extending this model to cross-chain user states (not just assets) will replicate and intensify this concentration.

Standards create centralization vectors. ERC-4337 and ERC-7579 define interfaces, but the relay infrastructure that fulfills cross-chain intents becomes the new choke point. This mirrors how HTTP is open, but AWS/GCP dominate traffic.

Permissionless relays are a myth. Executing a cross-chain user operation requires capital for gas, MEV protection, and liquidity access. This creates economic moats favoring incumbents like Gelato, Biconomy, and Pimlico.

Wallet SDKs dictate flow. Projects like ZeroDev and Rhinestone will embed preferred relayers into their developer toolkits. App developers adopt the path of least resistance, herding users to a handful of providers.

Evidence: In L2 rollups, over 80% of transactions are already routed through 2-3 dominant sequencers. The same relay oligopoly will emerge for cross-chain AA, controlling the critical messaging layer between chains.