Ethereum wants to be "the best Ethereum," and Base wants to be "the best Base."

Written by: Oluwapelumi Adejumo

Translated by: Saoirse, Foresight News

Ethereum and Coinbase's Layer 2 network Base have abandoned reaching a consensus on the operational specifications for the next generation of cryptocurrency wallets.

On September 14, Ethlabs researcher Derek Chiang stated that the collaboration between the developers of Ethereum's EIP-8141 framework transaction proposal and the developers of Base's EIP-8130 proposal had broken down. The two sides attempted to establish a universal account abstraction standard but could not reconcile the vastly different needs of the two chains.

After the divergence, Ethereum continued to advance the framework transaction, while Base implemented its own independent native account abstraction design. This likely requires wallets to adapt to different transaction architectures across various networks—despite these networks sharing a similar account and transaction experience in the past.

Both proposals aim to enhance wallet programmability and support features such as gas sponsorship, access keys, and flexible authentication. The core contradiction lies in the question of how much freedom the protocol should grant accounts and how many rules the blockchain should impose on transactions before execution.

Chiang stated:

“Ethereum wants to become the best version of Ethereum, while Base wants to become the best version of Base.”

Just a few weeks ago, parties involved in the project were still trying to bridge the differences. Ethlabs revealed at the end of August that even though the Ethereum core developers had sent strong signals about planning to include EIP-8141 in the Hegotá upgrade, developers were still discussing specialized thoughts on framework transactions and EIP-8130.

Competition Among Layer 2 Networks Drives Protocol Divergence

This failure of collaboration exposed a structural issue. As Ethereum's Layer 2 blockchain matures, acquiring its own user base, business priorities, and development schedules, this issue will become increasingly difficult to manage.

Ethereum core developer Matt Garnett stated that it is inevitable for divergences to arise among Layer 2 networks. Market competition forces Layer 2 networks to roll out new features at a pace far surpassing that of Ethereum’s Layer 1 network.

Garnett added:

“The market pressure pushing them to iterate new features is beyond what L1 can match, and incompatibility issues keep accumulating. Whether this will ultimately become an advantage or a drawback remains to be seen.”

This competitive pressure is reflected in the two rival account abstraction proposals.

EIP-8141 introduces framework transactions, breaking a transaction into multiple programmable calls that handle validation, execution, and gas payment logic separately. This proposal aims to detach accounts from the current mainstream elliptic curve key system of Ethereum, supporting key rotation and providing a pathway for post-quantum authentication. Its goal is to make accounts addresses whose behavior is entirely defined by code.

EIP-8130, on the other hand, adopts a more structured design written by Coinbase engineer Chris Hunter. It requires transactions to specify their own validators, allowing nodes to predict the overhead of validation work before executing any wallet code. This draft’s design is intended to make validation logic predictable, enabling nodes to directly reject unknown validators before a transaction is executed.

Chiang mentioned that the Ethereum mainnet prioritizes following a set of principles called CROPS: resistance to censorship and capture, open-source software, privacy, and security.

These principles favor an account model that can scale without the need for permission from chain parties, while the transaction design must accommodate privacy systems and future post-quantum signature algorithms.

However, Layer 2 networks like Base, which pursue high throughput, face different real pressures. Chiang stated that they require account abstraction systems that must not only have scalability but also possess clear logic, allowing the chain itself to define which authentication methods are permitted and which transactions are accepted.

The current draft of EIP-8130 reflects this divergence through two sets of independently adaptable configurations: the L1 configuration allows the use of non-standard validators within a limited scope; whereas the Layer 2 configuration allows high-throughput chains to confine the native transaction pathway to vetted standard validators.

This proposal still pursues cross-chain account portability; for networks that do not support EIP-8130 transaction types, a universal validator set and ERC-4337 can be used as alternative implementations.

In other words, even if Ethereum and Base adopt two different native systems, compatibility still exists, but the substantial work to maintain compatibility will no longer fall on the protocol itself.

Standard Splits Reassess the Cooperative Relationship Between Ethereum and Layer 2 Networks

As the technological differences between Ethereum and Layer 2 networks continue to grow, the dispute over account abstraction also raises a broader debate: does the growth of Layer 2 networks automatically strengthen Ethereum itself?

Crypto industry lawyer Gabriel Shapiro believes the rupture between EIP-8141 and EIP-8130 will make it harder to support the argument that "Layer 2 networks are naturally beneficial to Ethereum." He stated:

“Layer 2 networks are excellent for the crypto industry and for holders of sorters. But for Ethereum, they are only 'not that bad' compared to other competing public chains.”

His argument centers on where value and control will ultimately flow. Networks like Base can attract users, applications, and transaction traffic, harness the economic benefits brought by sorting, and make product decisions based on their own competitive priorities.

Ethereum continues to provide settlement and security underpinnings, but this cooperative relationship does not guarantee that every new feature of a Layer 2 network or every commercial success will directly enhance L1's product capabilities or economic model.

Shapiro suggests that Ethereum should reduce its reliance on the halo effect brought by projects like Base and Robinhood, and clarify the unique value characteristics of the underlying public chain. He relates this shift to Vitalik Buterin’s recent emphasis on resistance to censorship, privacy, and security. Even as many businesses continue to migrate to Rollup, Ethereum must highlight these core traits belonging to L1.

Of course, Layer 2 networks will still generate settlement demand, consuming Ethereum's data availability resources, and keeping applications within the broader Ethereum ecosystem to avoid losing them to competing blockchains. EIP-8130 has also designed corresponding mechanisms to ensure accounts can migrate across various EVM chains, indicating that Base has not developed in the direction of an ecological island.

Even so, this account abstraction dispute remains a vivid case showing how the interests of various parties are diverging.