Protocol
EIP-8130 for chains & clients
Implementation-oriented protocol documentation: why Account Configuration exists, how mempool admission and invalidation work, how builders revalidate cheaply, and why policies, nonces, scopes, and locks look the way they do.
What this covers
| Concept | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Why | Motivation: shared auth, universal accounts, cheap validation for chains. |
| Overview | Account Configuration, authenticators, actors, scopes, policies, signed config changes. |
| Validation | Resolve → Authenticate → Authorize → Execute: what nodes check before inclusion. |
| Mempool & invalidation | Admission rules, locks for higher sender / payer rate, and what flips a pending tx invalid. |
| Block building | Execution order: gas, nonce, account_changes, call phases, receipts. |
| Gas & payers | Native sponsorship: SELF_PAYER vs SPONSOR_PAYER, ERC-8168, token repay, builder-native gas. |
| Design rationale | Why policies, 2D nonces, scopes & phases, authenticators & locks, multichain, and post-quantum look the way they do. |
Reading path
- Why EIP-8130 · What AA usually costs chains, and what a shared Account Configuration layer changes. (start here)
- Overview · Account Configuration, authenticators, actors, scopes, policies, and signed config changes at a high level.
- Onboarding & account creation · Three paths onto 8130: existing EOAs work as-is, deployed smart accounts register a key set via importAccount, and new accounts use the account config as their factory.
- Validation pipeline · Resolve → Authenticate → Authorize → Execute: what nodes must do before inclusion.
- Invalidation & revalidation · Exact-match vs balance vs expiry semantics; invalidate ahead of the builder.
- Block building & execution · Gas deduction, nonce increment, account changes, call phases, and receipt fields.
- Scopes, payers & phases · Scope bits, domain-separated sender/payer signing hashes, payer modes, and call phases.
- Authenticators & locks · Permissionless authenticators at deterministic addresses, and locks for higher sender / payer mempool rate.
- Gas & payers · Native sponsorship: SELF_PAYER vs SPONSOR_PAYER, ERC-8168, token repay, builder-native gas.
- Policies and session keys · Narrow key access via POLICY scope, opaque commitments, and a single policy_manager target.
- 2D nonces & nonceless · Parallel lanes, NONCE_KEY_MAX, expiry windows, and the fee-invariant replay_id.
- Post-quantum & scheme agility · A complete PQ solution: register a PQ actor at the same address, anchor the rotation before the cutoff, and retire quantum-vulnerable authenticators.
- Multichain & portability · Account types, chain_id 0 config changes, EIP-7819 factory outlook, and delegation vs EIP-7702.
- Metadata & attribution · A signed, top-level metadata field for attribution, memos, and off-chain commitments, plus an experimental structured encoding.
- Mempool design · Advanced / draft: 8130 works in the existing mempool; optional hardening for builder performance and higher account rate.