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Ethereum’s account model represents each account as an address with protocol state, including a balance, nonce, code hash, and storage root. The familiar distinction is between externally owned accounts (EOAs), authorized by keys, and contract accounts, governed by code. EIP-7702 qualifies that distinction: an EOA can now carry a persistent pointer to delegated code while retaining its address and ability to initiate transactions.
What is an Ethereum account?
An Ethereum account is an address-associated entity that can hold ETH and send messages on the network. Accounts can receive and send ETH and tokens, and interact with deployed contracts. Ethereum’s documentation describes a wallet as the interface or application used to interact with an account—not the account itself. A wallet may interact with an EOA or a contract account.
The protocol’s account state has four fields:
nonce: For an EOA, a counter associated with transactions it sends; for a contract account, a counter associated with contracts it creates. Transaction nonces help prevent a signed transaction from being reused.balance: The ETH held at the address, expressed in wei. One ETH equals 1018 wei.codeHash: A hash identifying the account’s EVM code. In the traditional account model, an EOA has the hash of empty code.storageRoot: A root hash that commits to the account’s storage trie; it is empty by default.
These fields describe protocol state, not where a person keeps coins. The ledger records an account’s balance; cryptographic keys authorize actions for a conventional EOA.
How do EOAs and contract accounts differ?
In the conventional model, both account types have addresses and can hold assets, but they authorize behavior differently and participate in transactions in different ways.
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| Capability | EOA | Contract account |
|---|---|---|
| What authorizes behavior? | A valid signature from the key controlling the account. | The account’s deployed EVM code, which defines how it responds to execution. |
| Can it originate a conventional transaction? | Yes. Conventional transactions are initiated by EOAs. | Not as an independent protocol transaction sender. Contract code can make further calls during execution. |
| Does it have executable code and contract storage? | Traditionally, it has no executable code and its storage is empty. EIP-7702 adds an important qualification described below. | It has executable code and can use storage. |
| How does it participate in calls? | It initiates a transaction, which may transfer value or call a contract. | Its code executes when called and can cause additional contract interactions as execution proceeds. |
This comparison describes the conventional account types. It is no longer accurate to treat “EOAs have no code” as an absolute rule, because EIP-7702 lets an EOA delegate execution to code.
How do transactions change account state?
A conventional Ethereum transaction is a signed instruction that initiates a state update. It includes a sender, recipient, signature, nonce, value, optional input data, and gas and fee fields. The sender is an EOA. If the recipient is a contract, Ethereum executes that contract’s code; execution can update account balances and storage and can trigger further contract calls. The resulting state changes are determined by transaction execution, not by the wallet interface used to prepare or submit the transaction.
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What does EIP-7702 change?
EIP-7702 allows an EOA to authorize a code delegation with a signed tuple. A type 4 set-code transaction records a delegation indicator in the EOA’s code field, pointing to delegated code. When the account’s code is executed, that code runs in the EOA’s context. The delegation persists until changed or cleared through the specified mechanism; it is not limited to one transaction.
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The EOA retains its address and its ability to originate transactions. Delegated behavior can enable features such as batching, sponsorship, and restricted sub-keys, but the code implementation matters: delegated code has broad access to the account’s state and assets. EIP-7702 warns that a poorly implemented delegate can give an attacker near-complete control over the signer’s EOA. This is a risk of unsafe delegated implementations, not a claim that every EIP-7702-enabled wallet is unsafe.
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How does ERC-4337 account abstraction work?
ERC-4337 adds account abstraction at a higher layer without requiring a new consensus-layer transaction type. Instead of submitting a conventional transaction directly as the user’s action, a user submits a UserOperation to a dedicated mempool. A bundler collects operations and packages them into a regular Ethereum transaction that calls an EntryPoint contract. A smart-contract account validates the operation according to its own authorization logic. An optional paymaster can agree to cover fees.
| Aspect | Conventional transaction | ERC-4337 flow |
|---|---|---|
| User’s submitted object | A protocol transaction. | A UserOperation, which is not itself a consensus transaction. |
| Authorization | The protocol validates the transaction signature and nonce for the EOA sender. | The smart-contract account’s validation logic determines whether the operation is authorized. |
| How it reaches execution | The sender broadcasts the transaction for inclusion in a block. | A bundler submits a transaction to the EntryPoint contract containing one or more operations. |
| Fee payment | The transaction sender pays the transaction fee. | The account can use its own payment logic, or an optional paymaster can agree to pay. |
ERC-4337 changes where authorization and some fee behavior can be defined: account code and supporting infrastructure handle those choices. It does not replace Ethereum’s ordinary transaction object. The ERC-4337 specification also describes support for EIP-7702-delegated accounts.
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How to keep the account model straight
- An account is protocol state associated with an address; a wallet is an interface for interacting with it.
- EOAs are conventionally key-authorized, while contract accounts execute code to govern behavior.
- Nonce, balance, code hash, and storage root are the four documented account-state fields.
- Conventional transactions originate from EOAs, but an EOA can now carry persistent delegated code under EIP-7702.
- ERC-4337’s UserOperations and bundler flow add account abstraction above the ordinary transaction layer rather than creating a new native transaction type.
Sources: Ethereum.org, “Ethereum accounts” (updated August 6, 2026); Ethereum.org, “Transactions” (updated July 25, 2026); EIP-7702; ERC-4337.
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