Why L2 Rollups Will Dictate the Next Smart Account Standard

Native L1 smart accounts are economically unviable for mass adoption. A single session key setup or batched transaction on Ethereum Mainnet can cost $50+. This kills onboarding and makes features like social recovery a luxury.

• Cost Barrier: Gas for a single AA operation on L1 can exceed the value of the transaction.
• Latency Penalty: 12-second block times make session keys and batched ops feel sluggish.

Rollups can bake gas sponsorship and fee logic directly into their protocol, making accounts feel gasless. This is a structural advantage L1 cannot match.

• Protocol-Level Sponsorship: Rollup sequencers can subsidize or abstract gas for AA ops as a growth lever.
• Native Batching: A rollup's single settlement to L1 amortizes costs across thousands of user-level actions, enabling ~$0.001 per batched user op.

The winning standard will be dictated by the rollup stack that optimizes the full pipeline: sequencer, prover, and account protocol. Expect rollups like Arbitrum, zkSync, and Starknet to push their own native account implementations.

• Sequencer Control: Enables instant, pre-confirmation UX for AA transactions.
• Prover Integration: Native zk-proofs for privacy-preserving account operations become feasible.

Base-layer accounts like Safe are gas-inefficient and functionally limited by Ethereum's consensus. They treat L2s as an afterthought, creating a fragmented user experience.

• Cost: A simple multi-sig transaction on L1 costs $5-50+. On an L2, it's <$0.01.
• Latency: L1 finality is ~12 minutes. L2s offer ~1-4 second pre-confirmations.
• Innovation Ceiling: Can't natively leverage L2-native precompiles, sequencer ordering, or custom data availability.

StarkNet bakes account abstraction (AA) directly into its protocol, making smart accounts the only account type. This first-principles approach enables features impossible on L1.

• Session Keys: Grant limited permissions for gasless UX in games and dApps.
• Sponsored Transactions: Protocols pay fees, removing the need for users to hold ETH.
• Atomic Multi-Ops: Bundle DeFi actions, NFT mints, and social logins in one L2-proven transaction.

zkSync Era's LLVM compiler and system contracts are designed for AA from day one. Its Account Model separates signer logic from storage, enabling radical flexibility.

• Paymasters: Allow fee payment in any ERC-20 token, abstracting gas entirely.
• Signature Abstraction: Support for Ethereum EOA, EIP-712, and custom zk-friendly schemes.
• Batch Processing: A single L1 proof verifies thousands of abstracted account transactions, driving cost to near-zero.

Fuel's parallel execution model, built on UTXOs, rethinks the account model for maximum throughput. Each account operation is a discrete, parallelizable state transition.

• Parallel Nonce: Eliminates transaction ordering bottlenecks, enabling true concurrent execution.
• Predicate Scripts: Stateless verification logic allows for trustless, complex spending conditions without on-chain deployment.
• Native Bridging: UTXO model enables atomic cross-chain actions with projects like Celestia for data availability.

As rollup-native accounts become the primary interface, traditional L1 wallets (MetaMask, Rabby) are reduced to key management signers. The innovation shifts to the L2 account layer.

• Wallet as a Signer: The L1 wallet just provides a signature to a more powerful L2 smart account.
• Aggregation Layer: Projects like Biconomy, ZeroDev, and Rhinestone emerge as middleware, plugging L1 signers into L2 account systems.
• New Business Models: Revenue shifts from L1 gas kickbacks to L2 session key subscriptions and paymaster services.

There will be no single 'EIP-4337' for L2s. The standard will be a set of primitives (paymasters, signature abstraction, batchability) implemented differently per rollup. Interoperability will be achieved via intent-based bridges like Across and Layerswap.

• Fragmentation is a Feature: Optimistic rollups, ZK rollups, and sovereign rollups will optimize for their own strengths.
• Unified UX: Aggregators and intent-solving networks (UniswapX, CowSwap) will hide complexity from users.
• The Bottom Line: The $50B+ in L2 TVL will dictate requirements, making L1-centric standards irrelevant.

Over 90% of user transactions now occur on L2s like Arbitrum, Optimism, and Base. An L1-centric account abstraction (AA) standard like ERC-4337 is architecturally misaligned, forcing L2 users to pay for L1 calldata overhead on every operation.\n- Key Benefit 1: Native L2 standards (e.g., Arbitrum Stylus, zkSync's native AA) can slash gas costs by ~40-60% by bypassing L1 simulation.\n- Key Benefit 2: Enables L2-specific optimizations like pre-confirmations and single-slot finality integration.

Winning standards will be modular kernels (like Rhinestone, ZeroDev) that abstract chain-specific implementations. This separates the wallet logic from the execution environment, allowing a single user account to operate natively across any L2 or L1.\n- Key Benefit 1: Builders write once, deploy everywhere. Users get a unified identity across chains without bridging assets.\n- Key Benefit 2: Creates a competitive market for L2 execution clients, driving innovation in privacy (Aztec), speed (Metis), and cost (Manta).

ERC-4337's permissionless bundler/paymaster model creates fragmentation. L2s with native AA support (e.g., Starknet, zkSync Era) can offer vertically integrated, subsidized transaction services as a core primitive.\n- Key Benefit 1: L2-native paymasters can sponsor gas in stablecoins or rollup tokens, enabling true gasless onboarding.\n- Key Benefit 2: Integrated bundlers reduce latency to ~500ms and enable atomic L2<>L2 intents via bridges like LayerZero and Axelar.

Smart accounts are the execution endpoint for intent-based architectures (UniswapX, CowSwap). L2-native accounts become the perfect settlement layer for cross-rollup intents routed by solvers on Across or Socket.\n- Key Benefit 1: Users sign a single intent ("swap ETH on Arbitrum for USDC on Base"), and the L2 account manages multi-step execution.\n- Key Benefit 2: Unlocks composable yield and risk management strategies that dynamically move capital between L2s based on real-time fees and APYs.

L1 account contracts are immutable fortresses but upgradeable via slow, costly social consensus. L2 accounts can leverage the rollup's faster governance and native security model (fraud proofs, validity proofs) for safer, more agile upgrades.\n- Key Benefit 1: Critical security patches or new EIPs can be deployed in days, not months.\n- Key Benefit 2: Enables experimental features (quantum-resistant sigs, TEE modules) in isolated L2 sandboxes before L1 mainnet adoption.

Major L2 issuers (Coinbase on Base, Consensys on Linea) will bake proprietary smart account standards directly into their dominant frontends (Coinbase Wallet, MetaMask). This creates unbeatable distribution and locks in developer mindshare.\n- Key Benefit 1: Seamless onboarding for millions of users from custodial to non-custodial L2 accounts.\n- Key Benefit 2: First-party data on transaction flows enables superior paymaster economics and MEV capture strategies.