In 1990, there were 11 million mobile phone users worldwide. By 2000, the number of mobile users had grown to a billion people. This is a 91 times increase in mobile users in 10 years. Remember, this was before the first iPhone, mobile application, or moderately decent game, existed on cellphones. Don't be surprised if crypto and Web3 experience similarly intense growth as these innovations occur.

This article will discuss account abstraction and how it will play a pivotal role in getting more crypto users. What you are about to read should be extremely exciting. If you are a current decentralized application user, you know the experience can be more streamlined, user-friendly, and straightforward.

You can have the best product in the world, but it isn't beneficial if no one can figure out how to use it. But, conversely, you can have an awful product that is easy to use and draw in the masses. Realistically, these innovations will draw in hundreds of millions and potentially billions of more crypto users.

What is account abstraction?

One of Apple's most significant advantages over its competitors is its ability to plug new devices into its ecosystem quickly and easily. As a result, I don't have to stress or get anxious about purchasing a new iPhone, iWatch, iPad, or any other Apple device. Instead, if Apple launches a new product, I feel comfortable and confident being an early adopter.

Using decentralized applications (dApps) is more challenging than using Apple devices. It reminds me of computers before the mouse or cell phones had full-letter keypads. Sending a text was a severe pain in the ass before keyboards.

This will change, thanks to account abstraction. Account abstraction is a technical term, and I'm not a technical guy. So I went over to ChatGPT and got the definition of account abstraction. I highlighted the parts I found most helpful.

In cryptocurrency, account abstraction refers to the separation of the underlying accounting system used by a blockchain from the higher-level features of the blockchain platform. This separation allows the blockchain platform to be flexible and adaptable, as it is not tied to a specific type of accounting system.

Instead of using a specific type of accounting system, such as a UTXO (unspent transaction output) model or an account-based model, the blockchain platform uses an abstract interface that can be implemented by any type of accounting system. This allows developers to easily build new types of accounting systems and plug them into the blockchain platform, without having to make significant changes to the rest of the platform.

Overall, account abstraction helps to make blockchain technology more flexible and adaptable, which can make it easier to build new types of blockchain applications and to incorporate new features into existing blockchain platforms.

Now that we understand account abstraction, here are some actual use cases and how they will benefit the entire crypto and Web3 ecosystem.

Introducing 1-Tap Crypto

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Interacting with dApps can be frustrating, time-consuming, and expensive. For example, approving a dApp to interact with your wallet can cost a few dollars on Ethereum. It's also confusing and scary the first time you use a dApp, and it asks you to give permission to this third-party application to access your crypto.

After the approval, then you can execute the transaction. However, some actions require multiple approvals absorbing more in fees and time. For example, adding liquidity requires both assets' approval and then depositing the liquidity.

With account abstraction, developers can bundle multiple transactions into a single event. For example, imagine cooking a new recipe and needing three ingredients from the store. With current DeFi, you must go to the store on three separate trips. With account abstraction, you can pick up all three ingredients in one trip!

Session Keys

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Sometimes you have to go into a dApp to do a transaction repeatedly. For example, I want to compound staking rewards, so I have to go the dApp, connect my wallet, hit compound, and approve the transaction. Sometimes, I may need to compound or claim multiple times in one dApp.

With Session Keys, you can pre-approve rules for interacting with the dApp. For example, if you don't like approving every transaction, you can set the parameters to allow certain transactions to be approved automatically. Then, you don't have to confirm every individual action in your wallet.

This will be necessary for transaction-heavy applications. For example, imagine a decentralized poker table where you have to approve a transaction whenever you want to take action. That would get old quickly. With Session Keys, you can take these actions without approving them.

Social Recovery and the End of Seed Phrases

Seed phrases are one of the dumbest aspects of crypto. They are easy to lose, steal, and write down incorrectly, and the concept needs to be clarified. The idea of crypto is to be tech-forward, not tech-backward. Security reliant on pen and paper is so last century.

With social recovery through account abstraction, if you lose your private key, you can authorize a new key as long as you can prove you are the wallet owner. The recovery can be trusted contacts, your hardware wallet, or a third-party service.

You can even use time delays to cancel the recovery if you want to. The critical thing is that you have control and options for securing your digital assets.

Multi-Factor Authentication and Enhanced Security

2FA authentication is standard in many secure web2 applications and websites. Whether using something like Google Authenticator, an email passcode, a text passcode, or a phone call, this adds an extra level of security to your accounts.

Account abstraction can allow you to require one or multiple 2FAs. It will allow you to block transactions to scam addresses, protect you from fake NFTs or scam coins, and set daily transfer limits.

Plug-Ins for Greater Flexibility

Think of plug-ins as an app store for your mobile wallet. Developers can build plug-ins with new functionalities to update you on the latest changes or features.

Right now, finding decentralized applications can be challenging and not very secure. However, with plug-ins, more legitimacy and real-time changes will be accessible to more users.

Key Takeaways

Security, ease of use, accessibility, cost and time savings, and peace of mind will significantly increase with account abstraction. The cleaner, safer, and faster the experience, the more users that crypto and decentralized applications will be able to onboard.

While we are in a crypto winter where prices are doing what we are hoping, it's reassuring that developers are working on improvements to make the space significantly more user-friendly and safe. Once these models are implemented, they should become easy to duplicate, and the crypto ecosystem will achieve massive user growth.

What do you think? Is crypto easy to use right now? Can account abstraction open the door to more users and help ecosystems grow? What do you think will have the most significant impact on getting more people into Web3? Share your thoughts in the response section.

https://medium.com/crypto-guardians/how-100-million-more-people-will-use-crypto-with-these-improvements-a57d34c33a9a