Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said native smart accounts could be introduced within a year through the network’s planned Hegota upgrade, marking a major step towards full account abstraction.
The proposed change, outlined in EIP-8141, would embed smart accounts at the protocol level, replacing externally owned accounts that rely on private keys and fixed ECDSA signatures with programmable contract-based validation.
“Finally, after over a decade of research and refinement of these techniques, this all looks possible to make happen within a year (Hegota fork),”
Said Ethereum co-founder, Vitalik Buterin.
The Hegota upgrade is currently targeted for the second half of 2026, following earlier network updates including Pectra in May 2025 and Fusaka in December 2025, with smart accounts potentially going live by late 2026 or early 2027.
EIP-8141 would introduce a new “frame transaction” structure allowing up to 1,000 frames per transaction, alongside an APPROVE opcode and paymasters enabling gas fees in tokens such as USDC or fully sponsored transactions.
Buterin said account abstraction is “highly complementary with FOCIL,” referring to EIP-7805, adding that:
“FOCIL ensures rapid inclusion guarantees for transactions, and AA ensures that all of the more complex operations people want to make actually can be made directly as first-class transactions.”
While supporters argue the overhaul could improve security, enable multisignature validation and reduce reliance on intermediaries introduced under EIP-4337, critics warn the added complexity may increase denial-of-service risks and hardware compatibility challenges as Ethereum weighs its most ambitious wallet redesign to date.
At the time of reporting, Ethereum price was $2,045.80.