Omnichain Account Abstraction

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This section refers to an upcoming product. As such, although our concept and initial design are finalized, some changes might still occur and be reflected accordingly.

Problems with account abstraction

The current ERC-4337 AA framework more closely resembles "transaction flow abstraction," as it primarily focuses on optimizing the underlying process for transaction execution rather than the accounts themselves.

This is valuable in that it lays a foundation for smart wallets to be adopted and later implemented at a protocol level but creates a unique set of problems, namely:

• Hard-to-integrate AA solutions, leading developers to build custom implementations.
• Poor account module compatibility, resulting in a fragmented ecosystem.
• Fragmentation between different chains, making it difficult to provide end-users and developers with a unified and high-quality experience. This results in subpar UX implementations.

Consequently, the current multi-chain EVM environment results in users with smart accounts deployed independently on different chains. For each of them, information related to account management –including permissions– is stored in the contract's Storage. Updating this information requires users to initiate transactions on multiple chains, making it technically-challenging and time-consuming to ensure consistency across networks.

In light of these challenges, different approaches have been proposed to deal with them: Some of them focus on modularity and compatibility, two necessary features for AA. Others focus on bootstrapping AA across a multi-chain ecosystem with multiple L2s and EVM chains. By proposing Omnichain AA within the framework of Modular Smart WaaS, Particle Network seeks to combine different approaches, creating a unified solution.

Solving the multi-chain problems of smart accounts

Particle's own approach elaborates and provides a viable alternative that addresses multi-chain AA’s shortcomings and takes advantage of other infrastructure components of Web3.

Particle Network’s approach proposes the usage of an independent chain –the Particle Chain– as the full-chain Storage database for smart accounts. Through third-party cross-chain messaging solutions (such as LayerZero, CCIP, Axelar, Connext, etc,) changes to an account's Storage by a user will be eventually synchronized to the Account's local storage on other chains. Particle Network introduces cross-chain UserOperations to further abstract the concept of chains, facilitating seamless cross-chain interactions. It also features the Particle Network Token as a Unified Gas Token to abstract elaborate gas mechanisms, simplifying the usage of smart accounts across chains. This is depicted in the diagram below:

Particle Network's Omnichain Account Abstraction allows users to have a unified smart contract account address on different EVM chains. To achieve this, our design involves deploying a set of Deployer Contracts on each chain. Users must trigger the generation of a new account on the Particle Network Chain, which will cause it to trigger all Deployer Contracts on different chains. This ensures that the generated smart contract account addresses are consistent across them. Alternatively, users can interact with multiple chains through contracts on the Particle Chain without actively managing multiple addresses, and they can use Particle’s token as a unified fee payment method.

Omnichain Account Abstraction also enables cross-chain UserOperations by executing transactions on the target chain and paying the corresponding gas on the source chain. For example, this allows users to purchase NFTs on Base using Polygon $USDC.

Omnichain AA does require a high level of coordination between the Deployer Contracts and cross-chain message-passing components to achieve synchronization between multi-chain accounts and source chain storage. This places high demands on the oracle or cross-chain message bridge used –a common issue in solutions related to full-chain interoperability. However, synchronizing the user's cross-chain account can happen via flexibly configuring different combinations of Message Bridges, rather than relying on just one. For example, these can, be configured with a 2/3 strategy, where confirmation from any two of LayerZero, Axelar, and Connext is required to confirm the storage change on the target chain, solving the single-point-of-dependency problem.

Particle Network’s featured solution also addresses the additional issue of facilitating compatibility with chains that are EVM-compatible but that have different AA implementations and, as such, cannot be unified with ERC-4337 addresses.

As you may see, the Particle Chain plays a structural role in Omnichain AA, but is also leveraged by other components, like our Confidential zkStack, to process transactions and provide users with privacy.

Evolutionary steps for Omnichain Account Abstraction and the Particle Chain

The AA framework is still taking shape, creating room for more improvements, including ecosystem adaptations (e.g., EIP-1271), modular functionalities (e.g., EIP-6900), and continuous improvement in a dynamic environment, all while ensuring security. Omnichain AA could play a significant role here, and, specifically, there are several directions for further growth:

• Optimistic cross-chain UserOperations. Some cross-chain settlement oracles may be challenging to use due to their slow or costly nature. Optimistic cross-chain protocols can mitigate settlement delay issues, effectively enabling fast and economical cross-chain message passing on any slower bridge. This can help users execute cross-chain UserOperations faster (e.g. purchasing an NFT on the Base chain using Polygon USDC within 5 seconds.)
• Ensuring privacy of user account and transaction data by combining Confidential Login and Confidential Transactions.
• Optimizing gas consumption in cross-chain transactions to improve execution efficiency.
• Continue advancing the AA framework, including modularization and ecosystem adaptation.