Developers working on Ethereum and Base have ended an effort to reconcile two competing approaches to native account abstraction, potentially leaving the networks with different transaction standards if both proposals ultimately ship. The collaboration sought to align Base-led EIP-8130 with EIP-8141, known as Frame Transactions, but the teams are now pursuing the designs separately.
Ethlabs researcher and ZeroDev founder Derek Chiang said in a September 14 post on X that the collaboration had broken down the previous week after the participants were unable to reconcile their core requirements. Both EIP-8130 and EIP-8141 remain Draft Ethereum Improvement Proposals, meaning the divergence concerns proposed infrastructure rather than two incompatible standards already active on Mainnet.
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.
I want to share some reflections on this collab and on the future of the EVM.
For a long time, the…
— Derek Chiang | Ethlabs (@decentrek) September 14, 2026
EIP-8130 and EIP-8141 Take Different Paths to Account Abstraction
EIP-8141 introduces a new Frame Transaction type that separates transaction validation, gas authorization and execution into programmable frames. The proposal is designed to make account abstraction native while supporting capabilities including sponsored transactions, ERC-20 gas payments, key rotation and migration toward post-quantum authentication. Its authors include Vitalik Buterin, several Ethereum researchers and Chiang himself.
EIP-8130 instead combines a new transaction type with an on-chain keystore and authenticator system. Base’s design emphasizes predictable transaction validation, portability and high-throughput account operations without requiring nodes to execute arbitrary wallet code during initial validation. Base currently lists EIP-8130 as a planned component of its Cobalt upgrade, with native batching, sponsorship and multiple authentication methods among the targeted capabilities.
Chiang attributed the failed convergence effort to different priorities between Layer 1 and Layer 2 environments. Ethereum-focused development places greater weight on censorship resistance, privacy and long-term security, while Base has stronger requirements around scalability, customization and compliance, according to his account of the discussions. Both approaches nevertheless target overlapping user-facing capabilities, including passkeys, gas sponsorship and more programmable accounts.
Separate Standards Could Shift Complexity to Wallets
If both designs are ultimately adopted, wallet and application developers may need to accommodate different native account-abstraction transaction formats across Ethereum and Base. That could move part of the interoperability burden from the protocol layer into wallets and development tooling, although software could potentially hide those distinctions from end users.
The disagreement does not mean Ethereum and Base have stopped sharing the EVM or become generally incompatible. The potential fragmentation is specifically about how native account abstraction is represented and validated, and both specifications can still change because neither has reached Final status. EIP-8130 also explicitly provides portability mechanisms for chains that do not support its native transaction type.
The split comes as Ethereum developers pursue other wallet-experience improvements, including the Clear Signing standard referenced in earlier ecosystem work. The Ethereum Foundation formally launched that initiative around ERC-7730 in May, aiming to replace opaque transaction prompts with human-readable descriptions. Clear Signing addresses what users see before approving an action, while EIP-8130 and EIP-8141 address the deeper transaction and account-validation architecture, making the efforts complementary rather than competing.
The key next step is whether the two proposals progress toward actual network upgrades in their current forms. Until EIP-8130 and EIP-8141 move beyond Draft status and receive concrete activation decisions, the practical extent of account-abstraction fragmentation remains unresolved rather than established.
