Introduction to Account Abstraction

Ethereum accounts today are mostly externally owned accounts (EOAs) — simple key pairs that sign every transaction. Account abstraction asks a different question: what if your wallet were a smart contract with rules you define?

Smart wallets can add spending caps, session keys for games, social recovery through guardians, and gas paid in stablecoins. None of that requires changing how Ethereum reaches consensus — ERC-4337 introduced a parallel path for these operations on mainnet.

This course walks through the limits of EOAs, the ERC-4337 stack, intent-based architecture, and the UX patterns that could make Web3 feel as smooth as a modern app without handing keys to a custodian.