The failed Ethereum-Base account abstraction merge moves the cost onto wallet teams

Ethereum and Base developers ended a months-long attempt to merge two competing account abstraction designs into a single standard; the talks, which sought to reconcile Base-led EIP-8130 with Ethereum's EIP-8141, known as Frame Transactions, collapsed last week, and both networks will now ship their own native account-abstraction models instead of a shared format.

Account abstraction is meant to make wallets easier to use; in practice that means users can pay gas without holding ETH, sign with a phone passkey, and batch several actions into one transaction.

Ethereum Layer 1 is optimizing for censorship resistance, privacy, security and long-term extensibility, while Base and other Layer 2s are optimizing for throughput, customization and compliance.

Base has been testing the design on its vibenet environment and has positioned it as a fit for the OP Stack.

Base is developing native account abstraction via Keystore under EIP-8130, currently live on devnet.

Interoperability standards became secondary to each chain's core goals, leading both to go their separate ways and "putting the burden on wallets," Derek Chiang, founding member and researcher at Ethlabs and a co-author of Ethereum's EIP-8141 proposal, said in a Monday X post.

Chiang said the separation will not necessarily result in a bad outcome, as both Ethereum and Base are now "free to innovate on AA to the maximal extent in accordance with their own visions."

If both proposals go live as planned, wallet and app teams will have to support two native transaction formats.

"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," Chiang wrote in a post dated September 14, 2026.

Chiang argued the split is not automatically a failure, and that if wallets hide the differences well, end users could still get a smooth experience.

For years, the EVM's common account model and transaction type let the same wallet work across Ethereum and its Layer 2s.

Frame Transactions treat a transaction as a sequence of programmable frames, or contract calls, that can handle validation, gas payment, privacy proofs and other features without constantly rewriting the transaction envelope.

Ethlabs developer Derek Chiang, who helped coordinate the talks, said the teams found several technical bridges, and every option required at least one side to give up part of its core goal.

"Ethereum wanted to be the best version of Ethereum, and Base wanted to be the best version of Base," Chiang wrote.

Chiang sketched two responses: a wider coordination process that gives Layer 2s a real voice in EVM decisions, or acceptance that fragmentation is inevitable and investment in wallets that paper over it; he now leans toward the second path.

Ethereum developers could begin implementing Hegota in late 2026 following Glamsterdam, whose mainnet launch is expected sometime in the second half of 2026 according to Ethereum's public roadmap.

Base's format is already running on a test network while Ethereum's arrives with Hegota, which developers could begin implementing in late 2026 after Glamsterdam, so a wallet team has one live format to write against today and one dated to an upgrade that has not yet shipped.

Wallet support goes from one shared native transaction format across Ethereum and its Layer 2s to two, since the common account model and transaction type previously let one wallet work everywhere and both proposals now ship separately.

Neither the Crowdfund Insider nor the Cointelegraph report gives a figure for the engineering cost to wallet teams or a count of wallets planning to support both formats.