Smart Contract Wallets vs EOA Batch Payments

Externally Owned Accounts (EOAs) excel at predictable, low-cost batch payments on high-throughput chains because they are native to the EVM and incur only base gas fees. For example, sending 100 payments on Arbitrum One costs ~$0.02 per transaction, making it viable for mass airdrops or payroll. However, EOAs lack atomicity—a single failed transaction doesn't revert the entire batch, creating reconciliation headaches and security risks.

Smart Contract Wallets (SCWs) take a different approach by batching logic into a single contract call. This results in atomic execution (all succeed or all fail) and enables complex conditional logic via multicall. The trade-off is higher gas overhead per operation and dependency on the wallet's audit quality. Protocols like Safe{Wallet} and Biconomy dominate this space, securing over $100B in TVL collectively.

The key trade-off: If your priority is minimizing cost per transaction on L2s and you can handle partial failures, choose EOAs. If you prioritize atomic execution, enhanced security, and complex transaction logic, choose Smart Contract Wallets. For CTOs, the decision hinges on whether operational simplicity or financial integrity is the higher-order bit for your use case.

Smart Contract Wallets (e.g., Safe, Biconomy, Argent) excel at programmable security and user experience because they decouple transaction logic from a single private key. For example, they enable features like multi-signature approvals, social recovery, and gas sponsorship, which are critical for enterprise-grade treasury management and institutional DeFi operations. Their modularity allows integration with account abstraction standards like ERC-4337, creating a future-proof foundation for complex dApps.

EOA Batch Payments (leveraging protocols like Gnosis Safe's multiSend, or using aggregators like Biconomy's Relayer) take a different approach by maximizing cost-efficiency and speed on the base layer. This strategy results in a significant trade-off: while a single batched transaction can pay hundreds of recipients for a fraction of the cost of individual SCW ops (e.g., ~$0.01 per recipient on Optimism vs. ~$0.50+ for a full SCW deployment), it sacrifices the programmable post-execution logic and native security features inherent to a deployed smart account.

The key trade-off: If your priority is sovereign security, complex authorization logic, and a non-custodial user experience for a defined user base, choose a Smart Contract Wallet. This is ideal for payroll systems requiring multi-sig approvals, DAO treasuries, or next-gen consumer dApps. If you prioritize minimizing gas costs and maximizing throughput for one-to-many disbursements (e.g., airdrops, rebates, mass refunds) where recipient wallets are simple EOAs, choose EOA Batch Payments. The decision ultimately hinges on whether you are building a user-centric account system or optimizing a back-end payment engine.