What Are Smart Accounts and Why Do We Need Them?

Archetype natively integrates Safe smart accounts to elevate the user experience and restore faith in the future of DeFi.

Smart accounts are a secure and more convenient alternative to traditional browser wallets (EOA). Using a smart account enables things like social login, gas-free transactions, and other seamless user operations. 

Think of your smart account as a proxy that abstracts away the frictions of DeFi to give you more control and freedom over your activities.

Smart accounts just make life on Archetype easier, but what does that look like in practice? Let’s take a look.

Why Do We Need Smart Accounts?

Entity-owned accounts (EOAs) are the current standard for user interactions on chains like Ethereum and Arbitrum.

Although you might not have heard of the term before, you probably use EOAs on a daily basis — take Metamask or Rabby as an example. EOAs are a simple account type that allows users to sign actions with their private key (often represented by a seed phrase) to perform operations on the account.

Though simple, this type of logic limits the capability of users’ on-chain actions. Users are required to learn about private keys, gas fees, token approvals and more before being able to securely perform as much as a token swap! 

‘Nuff said, the user experience with EOAs is terrible, and smart accounts-first platforms like Archetype are the future of France.

Not only that, there’s a crazy amount of security risk associated with these wallets, especially considering the “best practices” such as removing approvals and setting approval limits are advanced concepts completely foreign to new users.

Do we really expect the widespread adoption of on-chain apps to take place when the user experience looks like this? Nah, not really – that’s why native account abstraction and smart accounts are here to save the day.

What Are Smart Accounts?

If EOAs are directly operated by users leveraging Ethereum’s native logic, smart accounts utilize smart contracts to redefine the authentication rules. This means smart accounts are fully programmable!

Smart accounts are deployed and owned by EOAs. Deploying one (or even multiple) is really quite straightforward on Archetype — you’ll be prompted to do so upon signing in for the first time.

First we had programmable money with Ethereum, now we have programmable wallets with smart accounts. Let’s briefly cover what they unlock for users on Archetype.

Transaction Bundling

Archetype is able to bundle multiple actions into one single transaction. For example, a simple swap could also purchase a put option as a hedge against unwanted downside! 

Social Onboarding

Archetype utilizes smart accounts to allow users to onboard with a social account (Google, etc.) or email, while still being able to migrate to a more trustless setup later.

Social Login and Recovery

Users who deploy smart accounts on Archetype with social onboarding are able to secure their account via social recovery. More on social recovery and best security practices in a future article!

Gasless Transactions

Smart accounts allow Archetype to sponsor your transactions, reducing accrued gas costs to near-zero! No problem, you can thank us later. 

Price Protection

When Price Protection is toggled on, Archetype automatically protects the received tokens by purchasing a put option within the swap transaction by utilizing transaction bundling. Expect more in-depth content about Price Protection and its inner workings in future articles!

The Future of DeFi is Smart (Accounts)

Reimagine the future of on-chain finance: Archetype is approaching!

For long enough the EVM experience has been outshadowed by the Solami memer casino. Time for my EVM bros to rise up!

We’ve got all the buzzwords — intents, account abstraction, and core DeFi primitives. Archetype is set to revolutionize the way you, me, and everyone’s grandma trades on-chain.

Archetype is building the future of finance and we want you to join us! If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to join our community here.

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