Ethereum’s Trustless Manifesto, MetaMask Multichain Accounts, RIP-7560 Explained, x402 Protocol

#web3 #blockchain #ethereum

We are welcoming you to our weekly digest! Here, we discuss the latest trends and advancements in account abstraction, chain abstraction and everything related, as well as bring some insights from Etherspot’s kitchen.

The latest news we'll cover:

Ethereum and Vitalik Publish “Trustless Manifesto”
Etherspot Explains: RIP-7560 - Educational Piece
MetaMask Launches Multichain Accounts
Account Abstraction Dilemma and x402 Protocol’s Breakthrough

Please fasten your belts!

Ethereum and Vitalik Publish “Trustless Manifesto”

The Ethereum Foundation, in collaboration with Vitalik Buterin and the Account Abstraction team, has published a document titled the “Trustless Manifesto,” which has been permanently deployed on-chain.

The manifesto articulates core values of decentralisation, self-custody, verifiability and resistance to convenience-engineered centralisation. Its deployment as a smart contract, with no administrator or owner, signals a commitment to trust-minimised architecture where users can pledge adherence by calling a pledge() function.

The Account Abstraction team emphasises that the document is not merely symbolic: it reaffirms the idea that verification replaces blind trust, and every protocol design decision must consider whether it introduces unnecessary intermediaries.

The manifesto lays philosophical groundwork for account and chain abstraction builders, insisting that UX innovations not compromise permissionless access or verifiability. As wallet and multi-chain flows increase, this declaration sets a standard. If flows rely on opaque relayers or centralised bridges, they compromise Ethereum’s foundational trust model.

Etherspot Explains: RIP-7560 — Educational Piece

Etherspot published an explainer on X outlining how RIP-7560 advances Account Abstraction by shifting key mechanisms from smart-contract infrastructure into the protocol layer of rollups.

The post begins by revisiting ERC-4337, noting that it introduced UserOperations, bundlers, the shared EntryPoint contract, and optional paymasters to make wallets programmable without modifying Ethereum’s base protocol. These components enabled features such as batched actions, custom validation logic, recovery mechanisms, and the ability to transact without holding ETH.

The post explains that RIP-7560 builds on these foundations by proposing native transaction types handled directly by rollups rather than through an external EntryPoint contract and off-chain bundlers. This change moves validation, execution, and fee logic into the rollup protocol itself, reducing the number of moving parts and lowering overhead for AA workflows.

The native processing model allows smart wallets to operate more efficiently and enables rollups to standardize AA behavior across their ecosystems. This design reduces reliance on contract-based routing, potentially improving performance while maintaining compatibility with existing tooling.

The post emphasizes that RIP-7560 remains fully backward-compatible with ERC-4337. Wallets, paymasters, and bundlers built on top of 4337 can continue functioning as before, while rollups that adopt RIP-7560 will process UserOperations natively rather than through contract execution. Etherspot frames this as a meaningful evolution: ERC-4337 demonstrated that Account Abstraction works in practice, and RIP-7560 aims to establish AA as built-in infrastructure for rollups.

Follow Etherspot on X for more EIP/ERC/RIP explainers!

MetaMask Launches Multichain Accounts

The MetaMask team announced the official launch of Multichain Accounts, marking a major shift in how wallet accounts are structured.

Under the new system, a single “Multichain Account” can hold parallel key sets across multiple networks, EVM chains like Ethereum and Solana, and, soon, Bitcoin, all derived from a single seed phrase.

The blog post explains that as users increasingly transact across diverse chains, it has become untenable to manage separate addresses for each network. Multichain Accounts aim to simplify this by re-architecting the wallet “account” layer: it now groups addresses rather than creating new ones for each chain.

For builders of account abstraction and chain abstraction flows, this update matters: it reduces user friction when switching chains or onboarding across multiple networks. By lowering network-management complexity, wallets like MetaMask can provide a smoother surface for AA-powered features: sponsored transactions, cross-chain intents, unified balances, while still leveraging multichain architecture.

Account Abstraction Dilemma and x402 Protocol’s Breakthrough

Odaily published an analysis examining the limitations of Ethereum’s AA and the emergence of the x402 protocol as a more practical standard for cross-chain payments. The article highlights criticisms that AA, despite years of investment in ERC-4337, Paymasters, and wallet infrastructure, has been “all talk and no action” and overly dependent on an EVM-only model.

The author notes that Paymasters shift gas costs to project teams, but the “motivation to burn money on payment is very weak,” making it difficult to maintain sustainable ROI.

The piece explains that AA depends on smart contracts, on-chain state, and EVM execution, which limits its reach beyond Ethereum-compatible environments. Attempting to extend AA to ecosystems such as Solana or Bitcoin requires additional middleware layers, increasing cost and complexity. This contributes to what the author describes as AA becoming “technology for technology’s sake,” a product of Ethereum’s earlier research-driven culture.

In contrast, the article describes the x402 protocol as relying on the longstanding HTTP 402 status code, allowing it to work across Web2 APIs, Web3 RPCs, and traditional payment gateways using only an HTTP request header. This design makes x402 a naturally cross-chain solution, where facilitators can interact with multiple chains, index user payment history uniformly, and enable developers to integrate once to serve the entire ecosystem.

The analysis argues that x402 offers a unified upstream protocol layer, reducing compatibility burdens at the application layer. Within this framework, ERC-8004 becomes an optional trust layer rather than a universal standard. By positioning ERC-8004 as “plug and play” inside the x402 ecosystem, the model avoids the top-down adoption challenges that AA faced.

We’d like to add here that account abstraction is much more than a payment request mechanism. It’s a foundation for programmable wallets, permissions, batching, and secure automation. Off-chain protocols like x402 can play a role in coordination, but they don’t replace the on-chain execution layer that AA provides.

Start exploring Account Abstraction with Etherspot!