Vitalik Buterin highlights account abstraction in security and convenience, talks metaverse

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said account abstraction is the way towards providing security and convenience for blockchain developers and users during his Wednesday speech at BUIDL Asia, a crypto-focused conference in Seoul, South Korea.

A modern account abstraction includes other features that improve security and convenience that Ethereum currently does not support, according to Buterin. Security goals include allowing users to change and revoke private keys and better means of account recovery, while convenience goals include users being able to pay gas fees in ERC-20s and automation of payments.

The concept of account abstraction refers to the concealment of more technical details of on-chain interactions in favor of accessibility and user-friendliness. Ethereum’s account abstraction aims to enable user wallets to work as smart contracts without having to manage externally owned accounts and its private keys. 

Ethereum users currently interact with the network by using externally owned accounts (EOAs), which requires them to maintain a private key and extra accounts with extra funds, which pose a major drawback for users and developers.

“The next 10 years are going to be about really upgrading the ecosystem at the user level,” Buterin said at the event. “Let’s make something people in the world's lower-income countries can actually go ahead and use.”

Thoughts on the metaverse

In a Q&A session following his speech, Buterin was asked for his thoughts on the metaverse concept, the popularity of which surged during the past bull cycle but has seemingly withered since, as companies failed to make remarkable progress.

“To me, metaverse is one of those things that are very poorly defined,” Buterin said. “It feels like everyone has this expectation that there is this virtual world they could all participate in.”

“But the challenge is that it often gets connected with virtual reality, but then with virtual reality, the kinds of things that people actually need, ends up being much simpler,” Vitalik continued, adding that “a laptop that’s not a laptop” is not exactly a “verse,” albeit useful.