The Application Layer Wallets And Sdks
Explore how smart contract wallets, embedded SDKs, and standards like ERC-5792 power user experience in Account Abstraction.
⭐️ What is a Smart Contract Wallet?
Smart contract wallets (SCWs) are user accounts implemented as contracts. Unlike EOAs (Externally Owned Accounts), they:
Execute logic inside
validateUserOp()for flexible validationSupport features like batched calls, session keys, and gas sponsorship
Can be upgraded, delegated, or extended with plugins
SCWs are the primary building block of Account Abstraction (AA), enabling programmable UX beyond the constraints of traditional wallet paradigms.
🙊 Why We Don’t List Wallets or SDKs Here
While there are only a few dozen bundlers and Paymasters, the number of wallets and SDKs building on AA is already in the hundreds, and growing rapidly. Tracking them manually is difficult to manage — and risks becoming outdated or inadvertently favoring certain teams.
To solve this, the ecosystem has built a curated directory:
This site acts as an evolving “L2Beat for wallets,” indexing wallets based on:
Standards support
Security
Privacy
Recovery flows and passkey support
Feature sets like batching, paymasters, plugins, and more
It’s a go-to resource for developers and users evaluating wallet functionality.
🧩 Embedded Wallets and SDKs
Most apps don’t ask users to install a new wallet — they embed wallet functionality directly into the frontend, using SDKs. These SDKs often create a smart account under the hood, preconfigured to work with a hosted bundler and paymaster.
You may have encountered these flows already:
"Sign in with Google" → creates a smart wallet
"Claim token" → happens via a batched AA UserOp
"Gasless swap" → uses a paymaster behind the scenes
While we don’t list SDKs here either, developers will find no shortage of options — from infra providers to open-source toolkits. A quick search, GitHub crawl, or dev meetup will surface leading options.
⚙️ ERC-5792: A Standard Interface for Wallet Interactions
ERC-5792 defines a modern JSON-RPC API for how dApps and wallets interact — especially for Account Abstraction use cases.
It introduces new methods like:
wallet_sendCalls: send batched transactionswallet_getCallsStatus: check their resultwallet_getCapabilities: query supported features like paymasters or atomicity
Why This Matters
Under ERC-4337, different wallets may support different features — batching, session keys, sponsored gas, plugins, etc. ERC-5792 provides a capability-discovery layer, so apps can adapt to what the wallet supports.
This means:
Safer fallback logic if a feature isn't supported
Progressive UX — e.g., offer paymaster support only if present
Cleaner RPC semantics — no need to hack around
eth_sendTransaction
It helps AA apps scale across a fragmented wallet landscape while maintaining graceful UX.
Key Capabilities in ERC-5792
Batching: submit multiple calls, atomically or sequentially
Paymasters: plug in gas sponsorship services
Atomic Execution: ensure all-or-nothing behavior when needed
Session Keys: temporarily delegated privileges
By making all this programmable and discoverable via JSON-RPC, ERC-5792 helps SCWs feel as smooth as EOAs — but with superpowers.
✅ Summary
The application layer is where AA meets users — and it’s evolving fast. Whether you’re embedding a wallet with an SDK, or building your own SCW from scratch, the tooling and standards are maturing.
To stay up to date:
Browse WalletBeat
Review ERC-5792
Explore session keys, plugins, and modular architectures
Account Abstraction isn’t just infra — it’s UX. And this is where it shines.
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