Making web3 feel human: How smart EOAs are redefining the wallet experience

The following is a guest post and analysis from Nanfeng Jie, Lead Product Manager at Trust Wallet.

Over the past few years, we’ve seen a clear shift in how people interact with digital assets. More users are choosing self-custody as a deliberate move toward greater control and accountability. This trend is reflected in the rapid rise of tools like Trust Wallet, one of the most widely used self-custodial wallets in Web3.

At Trust Wallet, we’ve seen firsthand how quickly expectations are evolving. Users want more than security — they want simplicity. That insight guided our decision to become one of the first wallets to support EIP-7702, Ethereum’s latest proposal to make externally owned accounts (EOAs) behave like smart contracts. It’s what led to the development of FlexGas, a feature that allows users to pay gas fees with tokens they already hold, such as USDT, TWT, or BNB, directly from their wallet.

Now, let’s take a step back and examine the broader market context and the real-world pain points that led us to rethink how gas fees should work.

Recent market research values the non-custodial wallet sector at $1.5 billion in 2023, with projections reaching $3.5 billion by 2031, growing at a CAGR of 8% from 2024 to 2031.

But scale alone doesn’t tell the whole story, because the user experience hasn’t kept pace. People still juggle across chains, manually manage gas balances, and abandon transactions when approvals don’t make sense.

One of the most common pieces of feedback wallet teams hear from users is simple: “I don’t want to think about gas — I just want the transaction to go through.” And it’s a fair point. Gas fees aren’t just a cost; they’re a cognitive burden. Every failed or delayed transaction chips away at trust in the system.

The issue’s root lies in the architecture we’ve relied on for over a decade: EOA, the default wallet type for most users. It’s lightweight and secure, but wasn’t designed for the programmable, dynamic interactions that define today’s decentralized applications (DApps).

That’s why the Ethereum EIP-7702 proposal represents such a meaningful shift.

A Flexible New Layer for Wallet Behavior

First proposed by Vitalik Buterin in May 2024, EIP-7702 introduces a subtle but essential evolution in how Ethereum accounts work. It allows EOAs to temporarily take on smart contract behavior within a single transaction, bringing the benefits of account abstraction (AA) without forcing users to migrate to new account types or give up their seed phrase–based control.

With EIP-7702, users maintain full custody of their assets while gaining access to more flexible transaction logic. That means bundling approvals and actions into a single tap, enabling recurring payments, or supporting delegated session keys without separate smart contracts.

Simply put, EIP-7702 means fewer steps, less confusion, and a smoother user experience. Transactions are faster and more predictable, allowing gas fees to be paid using tokens already held without the need for native assets in advance.

Technically speaking, EIP-7702 acts as a modular extension to the EOA model. The user signs an intent, which may contain custom logic, and the wallet executes that intent through a temporary contract. Once the transaction is complete, the account returns to its standard EOA state, unlocking a more intelligent transaction layer for developers and infrastructure providers.

In turn, Web3 starts to behave more like something built for real people, not protocols.

Building the Infrastructure Behind the Abstraction

Supporting EIP-7702 at scale requires more than integrating a new transaction type or making user interface (UI) updates. It demands a robust, modular backend infrastructure capable of interpreting user intent, dynamically routing gas, and reliably executing complex actions across chains.

At Trust Wallet, we chose not to rely on third-party abstractions or SDKs. Instead, we developed our own account abstraction engine entirely in-house, built to be secure, scalable, and chain-agnostic. This modular system includes:

• Paymaster – for handling custom gas logic and token-based gas payments
• Bundler – for optimizing multi-step transactions
• Relayer – for robust, fast submission of abstracted transactions
• Gas Provisioner – for managing gas sources and routing across networks intelligently

This internal architecture gives Trust Wallet a lasting edge in performance and reliability, while setting a new standard for EOA-based smart wallet design. It also paved the way for FlexGas, the first prominent feature we built on this foundation. FlexGas allows users to pay gas fees with tokens such as USDT or TWT on Ethereum and BNB Chain.

Crucially, all of these enhancements preserve the essence of what makes self-custody appealing: users retain full control of their private keys, their seed phrases remain unchanged, and there’s no need to upgrade to a contract-based wallet. This balance (between power and autonomy) is what makes EIP-7702 such a significant upgrade rather than a disruptive replacement.

Shifting Wallets into Intelligent Agents

If widely adopted, EIP-7702 could become a defining layer in the next generation of Web3 infrastructure. It enables a future where wallets are responsive, intelligent agents — automating complex strategies, onboarding users, and unlocking frictionless interactions at scale.

The first real-world applications are already in motion. Features allowing users to pay for gas with tokens they already hold are nearly here. Gasless onboarding, automated execution strategies, wallet-as-a-service models, and smart transaction policies for institutional-grade use are all within reach.

The biggest breakthroughs in crypto often come not from radical overhauls, but from quiet upgrades that remove invisible frictions. EIP-7702 may be exactly that. It doesn’t change the way we think about Ethereum’s security model — it changes what that model can do for users.

Because at the end of the day, progress in Web3 doesn’t depend on how smart our contracts are. It depends on how natural they feel to use.

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