Ethereum 2026 Self-Sovereignty, Polygon Acquires Coinme and Sequence, Vitalik Publishes New AA Reference, EOA-to-AA Bridges

#ethereum #web3 #blockchain

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The latest news we'll cover:

Vitalik Buterin Says 2026 Should Reverse Ethereum’s Drift From Self-Sovereignty
Polygon Pivots to Payments With $250M Coinme and Sequence Acquisitions
Vitalik Shares New Account Abstraction Reference Document
Elegant Degradation Bridges EOAs and Account Abstraction

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Vitalik Buterin Says 2026 Should Reverse Ethereum’s Drift From Self-Sovereignty

Vitalik Buterin said he expects 2026 to be the year Ethereum begins reversing what he described as a period of “backsliding” in self-sovereignty and trustlessness, according to remarks reported by The Block.

Buterin argued that while Ethereum has scaled and improved usability, parts of the ecosystem increasingly rely on trusted intermediaries, including custodial wallets, centralized RPC providers, and off-chain services that weaken users’ direct control. He warned that these trends undermine Ethereum’s core values, even if they make the network easier to use in the short term.

He emphasized that the solution is not abandoning usability, but rebuilding it on trust-minimized foundations. Buterin pointed to protocol-level improvements such as account abstraction, safer self-custody defaults, and better wallet design as key mechanisms for restoring user autonomy without pushing users toward custodial systems.

According to the report, Buterin stressed that Ethereum should make self-sovereign behavior the easiest option by default, rather than something only advanced users can safely manage. He also highlighted the need to reduce hidden trust assumptions across the stack, including transaction routing, execution, and infrastructure access.

Buterin framed 2026 not as a single upgrade milestone, but as a convergence point where multiple protocol and ecosystem efforts align toward restoring Ethereum’s original promise: users controlling their assets and actions without relying on trusted third parties.

The broader takeaway is that Ethereum’s next phase should prioritize self-sovereignty, trust minimization, and credible neutrality alongside continued improvements in usability and scale.

Polygon Pivots to Payments With $250M Coinme and Sequence Acquisitions

Polygon is repositioning itself as a regulated onchain payments platform after confirming definitive agreements to acquire Coinme and Sequence in deals totaling more than $250 million. The move underpins Polygon’s newly announced Open Money Stack, a vertically integrated framework designed to enable compliant fiat and stablecoin payments in the United States.

The acquisitions mark a strategic shift away from Polygon’s earlier focus as a general-purpose Ethereum scaling solution toward payments infrastructure and real-world money movement. By combining settlement, wallets, and regulated fiat rails into one stack, Polygon aims to offer banks, fintechs, and enterprises a single platform for onboarding users, moving funds onchain, and settling across multiple blockchains.

Coinme brings regulatory depth and physical distribution that most crypto-native platforms lack. Founded in 2014, the company operates under money-transmitter licenses in 48 U.S. states and maintains more than 50,000 retail access points nationwide. Through Coinme, Polygon gains immediate access to compliant fiat on- and off-ramps, licensed wallet infrastructure, and APIs that allow Web2 and Web3 companies to embed crypto trading and payments without building regulatory operations from scratch.

Sequence complements this with user experience and wallet abstraction. Its embedded smart wallets and cross-chain orchestration technology hide complexity such as gas fees, swaps, and bridging. This enables 1-click transactions across chains, a requirement for payments where predictability and speed are critical.

Together, the Open Money Stack integrates Polygon’s blockchain rails, Coinme’s regulated money movement, and Sequence’s wallet and execution layer. Polygon’s leadership has framed stablecoins as crypto’s primary near-term use case, particularly for B2B settlement, remittances, and treasury operations.

Vitalik Shares New Account Abstraction Reference Document

Vitalik Buterin’s “Full account abstraction” write-up frames AA as an effort to make Ethereum’s transaction verification phase general-purpose and future-proof, moving beyond today’s model where verification is effectively “verifying the signature of a single, fixed ECDSA key.”

The document argues this generality is necessary for stronger security today and to avoid repeated future protocol changes, including in response to threats like quantum computing.

The write-up defines core AA goals around broader signature support (including multisig and quantum-resistant signatures), key rotation and account upgrades, and safer withdrawals from privacy protocols, where EOAs can struggle because users may need ETH that is not publicly linked to the sending account.

It also outlines stretch goals like gas payment abstraction without relying on off-chain intermediaries, compatibility with signature aggregation, and mechanisms like post-assertions and revert-protected transactions.

Vitalik compares multiple approaches, including “minimal AA,” privacy-focused keyholes, and a more general “Idea 3” that relaxes in-protocol restrictions and shifts complexity to mempool design. He highlights ERC-4337-style mempool rules and the option for custom mempools, while emphasizing compatibility with censorship-resistance work like FOCIL and future constraints like partial statelessness.

On EIP-7702, the document says it delivers meaningful UX wins but “is a completely different problem space” from full AA, listing major capabilities it does not solve on its own, such as key rotation, multisig, and quantum-resistant signatures.

The conclusion recommends focusing on variants of Idea 3 or EIP-7701, rolling out protocol changes relatively soon while expanding default mempool capabilities gradually.

Elegant Degradation Bridges EOAs and Account Abstraction

Mislav Javor, VP Product at Biconomy, published a detailed technical article arguing that backwards compatibility is the missing layer in Account and Chain Abstraction adoption, especially as EIP-7702 uptake remains uneven across wallets and users. The piece focuses on how existing EOA users can access meaningful smart account functionality without migrating funds or upgrading wallets.

The article identifies two persistent frictions: most users resist moving assets into new smart accounts, and many wallets still do not support EIP-7702. Even where 7702 is available, app-level adoption of smart account features like batching remains inconsistent, leaving developers to maintain parallel transaction pipelines for EOAs and smart accounts.

To address this, the Biconomy team presents a production-deployed “elegant degradation” mechanism that allows non-7702 EOAs to perform advanced smart account actions — such as batching and cross-chain execution — using a single standard approval signature. The approach exploits the EVM’s handling of calldata, appending a hash of intended operations beyond the ABI-expected bytes.

The article walks through a live example involving a multi-chain operation — bridging assets from Base to Arbitrum and supplying them into a Compound vault — executed with one EOA signature and no wallet upgrades. All validation occurs on-chain, and the relayer cannot deviate from the signed intent.

While the approach introduces trade-offs, including reduced signature transparency and additional transactions, the authors argue it meaningfully expands access to Account Abstraction features today. The proposal is positioned not as a final solution, but as a pragmatic bridge that enables gradual migration toward EIP-7702 and future AA standards without excluding legacy users.

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