In a recent X Space, builders and researchers discussed how Ethereum’s emerging Ethereum Interoperability Layer (EIL) fits into the broader ecosystem, alongside rollups, intents, ERC-4337 and EIP-7702.
The conversation brought together perspectives from the Ethereum Foundation (with Marissa from the account and chain abstraction team), wallet builders like Ivo from Ambire Wallet, infrastructure providers such as Partha, CTO of Etherspot, and security-focused builders including Ofir, the creator of the Kermerus and Stitch app, to unpack fragmentation, composability, UX trade-offs and the path toward a more unified Ethereum experience.
Below is a recap of the main themes and insights.
Why Ethereum Feels Fragmented Today
Ethereum’s decision to scale horizontally through rollups has largely succeeded in reducing transaction costs and increasing throughput. However, that success has come with a clear downside. Users now have to navigate multiple networks, gas tokens, bridges, and signatures, while developers must deal with inconsistent RPCs, bridge implementations, and deployment standards.
As Marissa summarized during the conversation, Ethereum works today, but it no longer feels like one system. The challenge facing the ecosystem is no longer just scalability, but composability across rollups.
This loss of a shared state has made fast, trustless cross-chain execution difficult. While existing bridges and aggregators offer polished UX, they often rely on additional trust assumptions, centralized relayers, or off-chain coordination, which introduces latency, privacy trade-offs and censorship risks.
What the Ethereum Interoperability Layer Changes
The Ethereum Interoperability Layer (EIL) is designed to address these issues by extending Ethereum’s transaction model across EVM chains. Instead of treating cross-chain activity as a sequence of disconnected steps, EIL allows a single user signature to trigger coordinated execution across multiple chains, with each chain handling its own portion of the transaction.
A core principle of EIL is that the user’s account remains the active executor. No third party executes transactions on the user’s behalf and liquidity providers never gain control over execution. This preserves self-custody while enabling cross-chain flows that feel closer to single-chain interactions.
To make this possible without centralized relayers, EIL is built on account abstraction. Gas abstraction plays a key role here, allowing users to interact across chains without holding native gas tokens on each network.
Why Account Abstraction Is Foundational
ERC-4337 was chosen as the execution foundation for EIL because it provides a standardized, permissionless way to abstract gas and execution without introducing new trust assumptions. The Shared Mempool, in particular, mirrors Ethereum L1’s execution guarantees by ensuring that no single bundler becomes a point of failure.
Speakers emphasized that broader wallet participation in the shared mempool is critical. However, adoption has been slower than expected, largely due to misunderstandings around account abstraction and concerns about security. Education, clear standards and stronger application-level incentives were repeatedly identified as prerequisites for wider uptake.
EIP-7702 and the Reality Behind the FUD
A significant portion of the conversation focused on EIP-7702, which allows EOAs to delegate smart account logic while keeping the same address. Despite growing attention, adoption has been held back by widespread misconceptions.
Several speakers clarified that EIP-7702 does not enable phishing by default, nor does it allow arbitrary contracts to take control of user accounts. Wallets must explicitly implement the new transaction type and delegation contracts are wallet-controlled. Many incidents attributed to 7702 are, in reality, the result of previously compromised private keys.
From a UX perspective, 7702 is critical for enabling flows like EIL without forcing users to move funds into separate smart accounts. Without delegation, users would need to sign multiple transactions manually or rely on awkward smart-account wrappers, both poor user experiences.
Intents and EIL Are Not Competing
Another recurring theme was the relationship between intents and EIL. Rather than competing approaches, they serve different purposes.
Intents are well-suited for expressing what a user wants, especially in scenarios involving search problems such as price discovery, auctions or liquidity optimization. EIL, on the other hand, focuses on how execution happens, extending Ethereum’s trust model across chains.
The consensus was that intent systems can sit on top of EIL, using it as a trust-minimized execution layer while retaining solver-based optimization where it makes sense. This preserves self-custody while avoiding a full shift toward request-and-fulfillment models.
Building With EIL in Practice
From a developer perspective, EIL significantly reduces the complexity of building cross-chain applications. Developers no longer need to manage gas on multiple chains, design custom bridging logic, or orchestrate multi-step approval flows. Instead, they can focus on execution logic while EIL’s SDK handles orchestration, status tracking and failure handling across chains.
While familiarity with account abstraction remains helpful, EIL abstracts many of the most error-prone aspects of cross-chain development, making sophisticated multi-chain flows far more accessible.
Looking Ahead
Liquidity fragmentation and cross-chain paymasters remain open challenges, but the current approach leans toward integrating existing solver and liquidity networks rather than reinventing them. Several new ERCs are also planned to standardize wallet support and cross-chain paymaster behavior, which should accelerate ecosystem adoption.
For developers interested in exploring EIL today, official documentation and a Telegram community channel are already available, with mainnet support expected to follow testnet experimentation.
The discussion made one thing clear: Ethereum’s next phase is about more than scaling execution. It’s about restoring composability without compromising trustlessness.
By combining account abstraction, EIP-7702 and a native interoperability layer, Ethereum moves closer to a future where users stay in control, developers regain composability, and the ecosystem once again feels like a single system, even across many chains.
If you’d like to listen to the full X Space, the recording is available here:
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