After a few days of the EthCC conference in Paris, it's easy to see a lot of "alpha" content shared by top Ethereum technical teams. One keyword that is increasingly frequent is EIP-7212. So what is this proposal and why is it worth paying attention to? Find the answers in the article below!
Basic Information
Before discussing EIP-7212, perhaps we should first talk about some more familiar content. Specifically, there is a proposal called EIP-4337, which involves the Account Abstraction (AA) model.
In short, these are foundational improvements that support the handling of "smart contract" encrypted wallets. This helps reduce issues encountered by users when interacting on the chain.
Recently, at ETHCC, many teams also shared discussions about AA. In particular, Vitalik, the founder, has his own views on this keyword and its potential for user experience.
What is EIP-7212?
EIP-7212 creates a precompiled contract framework for encrypted signatures and public keys, thus supporting more secure and convenient signature authentication on the EVM chain.
Currently, Ethereum only supports the "secp 256k1" signature standard. However, this standard is quite limited and incompatible with most commonly used encryption mechanisms today. Therefore, EIP-7212 aims to add the "secp 256r1" standard to the aforementioned contract framework, making it easy to connect many traditional encryption services and devices. From the perspective of "operational cost" (i.e., equivalent security), there is not much difference between the "k" standard and the "r" standard. This is why Ethereum wants to drive this change.
In short, EIP-7212 will reconstruct the way signatures work, creating the prerequisites for the network to move towards smart contract wallet mechanisms.
What problem does EIP-7212 solve?
If you follow Vitalik's blog posts, you may come across this key opinion leader (KOL) discussing the standardization of multisignature signatures in Layer-1 and Layer-2. Here is an excerpt from Vitalik's blog post titled "A deeper exploration of cross Layer-2 reads for wallets and other use cases."
The first issue (also mentioned by Vitalik) is that the signatures of Layer-1 and Layer-2 multisignature wallets will be different. If a user needs to change the signature for their multisignature wallet, the situation becomes more complex. Therefore, a standardized contract framework for signing on different EVM networks is essential.
The "half-true, half-false" story about Wintermute's different multisign addresses in L1 and L2 resulting in a hack to extract funds is the most concrete example of this issue.
The second issue is the cost of authentication. For EVM chains, the improvement in computational efficiency and optimized gas fees provided by this new contract framework will help increase the network's processing capacity.
The future applications of EIP-7212
According to the Ethereum EIPs documentation, if integrated into the main network, this proposal will unlock many important functionalities and leverage authentication mechanisms from many traditional electronic devices. These tools include:
Apple's Secure Enclave
Web Authentication
Android Keystore
Passkeys
Currently, another project related to this keyword under development is OpClave, which is a chain built on top of the OP Stack toolkit and integrates Apple's Enclave security mechanism for developing AA wallets.
An interesting comparison is that EIP-7212 can be considered as a solution to "connect the real world," but not to connect with real-world assets, but to connect with traditional address authentication operations (such as email, Web Authenticator, etc.). And when Worldcoin was just launched, there was another more special keyword, which is "biometric" authentication.
As mentioned in the summary, ERC-4337 wallet can fully integrate this new signature template, making the user experience more convenient.
What impact will this proposal have on the DeFi market?
It can be seen that the current smart contract wallet market is still in its early stage, with many reasons, but the main reason is definitely the unstable and fully constructed infrastructure. However, it is clear that Safe remains the leader in this field and has an "early advantage" to some extent.
However, when EIP-7212 is integrated, and at the same time EIP-1271 is implemented (the proposal requires the prioritized use of smart contracts and support for multi-signature verification), there will be many new variables in the smart contract wallet market. From these variables, if any project can leverage and adapt, a large number of users can be attracted to DeFi through the simple interaction tools that most of us are familiar with on a daily basis.
The current status of EIP-7212
If we look at the status of 7212 on the Ethereum website, we will see that the proposal is still in the "review" stage, and there may be many changes in technical implementation.
If there are any changes in technical integration by the Ethereum team, I will update the latest status of EIP-7212 in a timely manner.
Conclusion
Therefore, we have learned some information about EIP-7212 and why the Ethereum community is eagerly looking forward to this proposal in the near future. I hope the above article is helpful to you and look forward to seeing you in the next article!
