Disclaimer: The following blog is a submission from the Account Abstraction team. Content may not imply consensus views, and the EF is a broad organization that includes a healthy diversity of opinions across the protocol and, beyond, strengthening Ethereum together.
Since Ethereum’s inception, the promise has always been bold: a global, permissionless, censorship-resistant computing platform. Today, this promise is more alive than ever. Ethereum evolved through rollups, where block space is abundant and transactions are cheap. The challenge now is not just throughput, but smooth user experience across this multi-chain horizon.
And if all L2 I felt like a single, unified Ethereum?
No bridges to think about, no channel names to recognize, no fragmented balances or assets.
This is the vision of Ethereum Interoperability Layer (EIL): Making Ethereum feel like a chain again – while preserving the decentralized, trust-minimized foundations we all care about.
EIL makes Ethereum rollups feel like a single, unified chain by allowing users to sign only once for a cross-chain transaction without adding new trust assumptions. Built on the ERC-4337 account abstraction and principles of Manifesto without confidenceusers themselves initiate and settle cross-L2 actions directly from their wallets, not via relays or solvers. EIL preserves Ethereum’s core guarantees of self-custody, censorship resistance, disintermediation, and verifiable on-chain execution. This new layer of account-based interoperability unifies Ethereum’s fragmented L2 ecosystem under Ethereum’s own security model.
The problem: large-scale fragmentation
L2 channels have brought considerable gains in terms of throughput and profitability. Yet they introduced a new type of complexity for users and wallets:
- What channel is my token on?
- How to move tokens from Arbitrum → Base → Scroll → Linea?
- Should I trust a third-party bridge or relay?
- Does my wallet or dapp need to manually integrate each new channel?
From the user’s point of view, the result is less Ethereum and more several distinct Ethereums. You manage chains, not just transactions. This creates friction, cognitive overload, and often exposure to additional trust assumptions (bridges, relays, solvers) as well as increased risk of censorship.
The vision: several L2s, one Ethereum
Imagine this instead:
You open your wallet, choose an asset and an address, and tap Send.
Your wallet determines which chain it is on and how to deliver the asset, behind the scenes.
You create an NFT, move tokens, exchange assets – and it doesn’t matter which rollup you or the counterparty are on, or where the dapp is deployed.
New networks join the ecosystem, and your wallet it just works with them – no custom integrations, no dependence on off-chain operators.
It’s EIL. It is about Wallet-centric multi-chain UX: The wallet becomes your universal window into the Ethereum ecosystem, and the network feels like a seamless experience rather than a patchwork of islands.
In a sense, EIL is to Ethereum what HTTP was to the early days of the Internet.
Before HTTP, users could connect to individual servers, but could not seamlessly combine them into a single stream.
HTTP unified the experience, allowing browsers to navigate servers effortlessly.
EIL aims to do the same for Ethereum rollups: bring Ethereum into its “web era,” where wallets act as browsers and users navigate freely between L2s without friction.
What is needed: preserved trust assumptions
UX unity is compelling, but only if it doesn’t compromise Ethereum’s core values:
- Self-guard: users hold their assets and initiate transactions themselves.
- Resistance to censorship: no intermediary can block or delay your transaction.
- Confidentiality: You are not obligated to reveal your IP address or intentions to a relay or solver.
- Verifiability: Any important logic can be verified on-chain or in open source wallet code.
EIL was designed according to the manifest without confidence. It moves logic onto the chain and into the user’s wallet, removing dependence on intermediaries and opaque server logic. Users transact directly on all chains; trustless liquidity providers provide funds but never directly interact with users or see their transactions.
Instead of “I trust a bridge operator to move my funds,” you get “my wallet and my contract to do so – under verifiable rules.”
The confidence limit remains minimal.
Ethereum is about disintermediation – interoperability should be too
The great innovation of Ethereum is to replace intermediaries with verifiable code.
Crypto once relied on centralized exchanges (CEX) until Ethereum made decentralized exchanges (DEX) possible – no need to trust a custodian, no counterparty risk, just a verified smart contract. DeFi changed the world by providing a middleman-free alternative to TradFi.
Cross-L2 interoperability still looks like a CEX modelwith bridge operators, relays, solvers and opaque off-chain infrastructure.
Transactions across L2s should be as reliable as using a DEX.
EIL moves the logic on-chain and into the user’s wallet, removing dependence on intermediaries and opaque server logic. Users transact directly on all chains; trustless liquidity providers provide funds but never directly interact with users or see their transactions.
From the user’s point of view: what it feels like
-
Cross-chain transfer — Alice has USDC on Arbitrum, Bob is on base.
With one click, his wallet executes a transfer to Bob’s Base address. From Alice’s point of view: “Send USDC to Bob” – she doesn’t care what network this happens on. -
Cross mint — Alice holds ETH on Arbitrum and Scroll. She wants to create an NFT on Linea.
Its wallet automatically consolidates balances and seamlessly manages gas and asset movements across chains. One click, one signature. -
Exchange between channels — Alice finds better liquidity for her token on an Optimism DEX.
She trades from Arbitrum, her wallet manages the path and she returns to Arbitrum with her new token – no bridge, no manual steps.
For the user it is: “Send, create, trade – I just do what I want.”
Behind the scenes, it’s: “Wallet + onchain protocol transacts across chains – no new trust requirements.”
Why it is important for the ecosystem
When interoperability becomes a portfolio level capacity instead of application-by-application integration, the entire ecosystem moves forward:
- Wallets and dapps become multichain by default.
- New rollups are automatically compatible, which accelerates their adoption.
- Developers can focus on creating great experiences, not on wiring cross-chain plumbing.
- Users reclaim the simplicity of Ethereum: one wallet, one signature, multiple chains — one experience.
- More importantly, Ethereum’s minified trust model remains intact without new intermediaries.
This brings us closer to the original promise: a global, open, transparent and trustless world computer.
The essentials
Ethereum has already evolved. What is late is the feeling of unity.
THE Ethereum Interoperability Layer is the next step towards this unity – where your wallet is your portal and each rollup feels like a native extension of Ethereum rather than a separate silo.
We invite wallet teams, dapp builders, network designers, and the broader ecosystem to join this journey.
Together we can make Ethereum not only scalable, but also perfectly unique.
Let’s make Ethereum look like a single chain again.
