Laura Shi, the director of strategic initiatives at ConsenSys, predicts that the introduction of account abstraction, also known as “smart accounts,” could potentially onboard a billion users from the Asia region onto Web3.
This year, the Ethereum and Web3 ecosystem has experienced substantial growth in Asia, with more decentralized applications (dApps) improving user experience (UX) for the Asian market by incorporating Asian language support.
The expansion in Asia is primarily driven by the implementation of zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM) rollups and the widespread adoption of Optimistic rollups, both of which are layer-2 scaling solutions that offer developers enhanced security, scalability, and compatibility with Ethereum smart contracts.
According to Shi, the advancement of account abstraction, which provides greater programmable functionality and features similar to a traditional bank account, has the potential to further accelerate adoption in the region.
“The development of account abstraction will facilitate the onboarding of billion-level users in APAC to Web3”
In September 2021, Vitalik Buterin and other developers proposed account abstraction through EIP-4337. This proposal aimed to avoid making changes to the consensus-layer protocol and instead rely on higher-layer infrastructure. However, the concept of account abstraction has been present in Ethereum’s history for quite some time.
The 2022 Chainalysis Global Crypto Adoption Index revealed that Vietnam and the Philippines, both Asian countries, topped the list of countries with the highest crypto adoption rates. Interestingly, Thailand, China, and India also made it into the top 10, despite their governments expressing anti-crypto sentiments.
According to Laura Shi, social gaming and Web3 gaming are key drivers of mass adoption in Asia. She specifically mentioned South Korea and China as examples, highlighting that gaming publishers in South Korea are actively focusing on Web3 RPG game publishing to enhance the sustainability of the on-chain economic model.
The shift towards Asia has been a recent topic of discussion as American crypto and Web3 firms seek out more favorable jurisdictions in the region. Nevertheless, it seems that the Ethereum ecosystem in Asia is thriving on its own and does not require the push from the US government’s crackdown on crypto.
