Summary of Proposal
The Account Abstraction Community Hub would be a gathering point for various sub-communities in the Account Abstraction ecosystem. This includes communities focused around development and maintenance of Account Abstraction SDKs and libraries, wallets, block indexers, bundlers, paymasters, relevant protocol standards (e.g. ERC-4337, EIP-7701, EIP-7702, RIP-7560 and more), dapps leveraging Account Abstraction, ZK technology utilizing AA, and more.
Motivation and Rationale
Account Abstraction keeps on gaining traction and for many wallets and dapps it’s becoming table stakes to offer it either via ERC-4337 or EIP-7702. AA removes numerous onboarding and UX pain points for users, while preserving the core values of Ethereum (censorship resistance, decentralization, privacy, etc.).
There are dozens of teams building in this space, and it would be beneficial to have a dedicated space for everyone to meet, collaborate and learn - both for those teams for cross-pollination and alignment, but also for the builders looking to use Account Abstraction in their projects and can learn and collaborate with said teams as well as other builders.
This would be the second time the AA hub will take place, after a successful operation during Devcon7 SEA (see DIP52 and the hub agenda)
Some pics from the previous AA hub:
Such a space will be useful for all types of attendees, enabling a wide variety of discussions. For example:
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Highly technical, such as native Account Abstraction implementation or storage management in modular accounts
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UX design questions surrounding global vs embedded wallets, gas sponsorship, cross-chain assets, etc.
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Economics and game theory in regards to the new public mempool and paymaster design
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Security considerations around key management and account recovery, etc.
The Hub would have three primary “use cases”
Firstly, the Account Abstraction Community Hub can be a space for Account Abstraction teams and sub-communities to run informal events. These teams will register for the space in advance for activities such as roundtable discussions, office hours, AMA, etc. Such events would be less structured than a workshop or presentation registered specifically under the official Devconnect tracks; they would be more informal, accessible, and open-ended.
Secondly, there will be a number of official AA-related talks and workshops throughout Devconnect and the surrounding events, and the Account Abstraction Community Hub can serve as the default follow up spot for Account Abstraction track presenters to hang out after their sessions and engage their audience.
Finally, the Account Abstraction Community Hub may serve as a default “hangout” spot or Schelling point for AA-focused attendees, looking to learn about AA and engage other builders.
Implementation
To dig deeper into the first use case, which we expect to be the core driver of usage of the Community Hub: teams or individuals in the Account Abstraction space may reserve a time slot, during which they would lead informal activities that are open to the Account Abstraction community to participate in, either actively or passively. In the coming weeks we will engage AA-related teams and individuals in the space to formulate a schedule that will become clearer as we get closer to Devconnect ARG, just like we did during Devcon7 SEA. You can see the final schedule that took place here: https://aa-hub.erc4337.io/
We expect that such informal activities could include:
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Office hours: An Account Abstraction team may host a meet-and-greet for builders who are interested in developing on top of their libraries and services, giving them a chance to ask the team both technical and non-technical questions
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AMA: A chance for community members to pick the brains of relevant thought leaders in the space (e.g authors of EIPs, researchers, senior developers, designers, founders, etc.)
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Guided demos: Informal sessions where community members can drop by the Community Hub to try out an Account Abstraction application / wallet / SDK with guidance from a team member.
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Fireside chats or round-table discussions: These would be guided discussions on specific topics, led by a domain expert where anyone at Devconnect ARG who is interested in the topic may participate in.
We would invite various teams from across the ecosystem to host these activities and help manage the hub. Many of them have already expressed a strong interest in taking part.
The space will be operated from 10am - 4pm, or longer if we have enough support and demand from the AA teams, as well as enough interest from the community itself.
Each day, this period will be broken up into several slots of varying times, depending on the activity.
Different teams will “own” the space during their allocated slot, during which they will drive a “primary activity” (see the examples above).
Additionally, we imagine that the space will be used informally for follow ups with speakers from the conference, or from other side events.
Like we did during Devcon7 SEA, we will coordinate with all Account Abstraction teams to build out the schedule. This will be done both by reaching out to teams as well as by posting about it publicly to make sure everyone has a chance to participate.
We will also coordinate with all contributors on the ground, so the hub will be tended at all times during the Devconnect ARG opening hours.
In regards to equipment and production needs from the conference organizers, in decreasing order of priority:
- Seating for discussion groups
- Whiteboards
- TV-sized screen
- Power Outlets
- Desks and tables
- Signage
Team
The primary points of contact will be Ethereum Foundation Account Abstraction PMs, Tom Teman (@tomteman) and Marissa Posner (@ThewizardofPOS), and supported by their team members - the co-authors of ERC-4337: Yoav Weiss (@yoavw), Dror Tirosh (@drortirosh), Alex Forshtat and Shahaf Nacson.
In addition, we’ve already spoken with numerous Account Abstraction community members and teams who expressed a keen interest to participate in the organization effort (i.e help manage the hub in addition to filling up slots).
Like we did during Devcon7 SEA, we will make sure that the hub remains a “no shill zone”, and that talks focus on challenges in the space and how to solve them.
