EIP-8141: Frame Transaction

Add frame abstraction for transaction validation, execution, and gas payment

Abstract

Adds a new transaction whose validity and gas payment can be defined abstractly. This is achieved by decomposing the transaction into a sequence of frames which are contract calls that validate the transaction, approve gas payment, and execute standard user operations.

Motivation

The frame transaction type offers UX and security benefits across many areas:

• it provides a native off-ramp from the elliptic curve based cryptographic system used to authenticate transactions today, to post-quantum (PQ) secure systems.
• accounts are unlinked from their ECDSA keys, allowing native key rotation
• smart accounts become simpler and therefore safer by natively providing batch call processing
• alternative fee payment schemes are supported without centralized, third party relayers
• the default account gives the protocol an even stronger guarantee on the lowest common denominator of account functionality

Ultimately, frame transactions realize the original vision of account abstraction: an account simply becomes an address with code. It leverages the EVM to support arbitrary user-defined definitions of validation and gas payment.

Specification

Constants

Frame Transaction

A new EIP-2718 transaction with type FRAME_TX_TYPE is introduced. Transactions of this type are referred to as frame transactions.

Payload Encoding

The payload is defined as the RLP serialization of the following:

[chain_id, nonce, sender, frames, signatures, max_priority_fee_per_gas, max_fee_per_gas, max_fee_per_blob_gas, blob_versioned_hashes]

frames = [[mode, flags, target, gas_limit, value, data], ...]
signatures = [[scheme, signer, msg, signature], ...]

Field Definitions

Below are high-level definitions of each field in the transaction definition. Detailed behavior is defined in subsequent sections.

Outer transaction payload

• chain_id – the chain ID in which the transaction is valid.
• nonce – nonce of the sender to prevent replays.
• sender – the address of the intended sender of the transaction.
• frames – list of frames to execute.
• signatures – list of validated signatures available to the transaction.
• max_priority_fee_per_gas – the EIP-1559 priority fee per gas the transaction will pay.
• max_fee_per_gas – the maximum EIP-1559 fee the transaction is willing to pay, per gas.
• max_fee_per_blob_gas – the maximum EIP-4844 fee per blob gas the transaction is willing to pay. Must be 0 if blob_versioned_hashes is empty.
• blob_versioned_hashes – list of EIP-4844 blob versioned hashes.

Frame object

• mode – the mode specifies the specific execution semantics the frame will execute with.
• flags – specifies optional frame / mode features.
• target – the destination or to address for the frame.
• gas_limit – the maximum gas allowed to be execute in pursuit of the frame.
• value – the amount in wei that should transferred from the sender as part of the frame execution.
• data – the calldata provided to the top level call frame.

Signature object

• scheme – the verification scheme used to interpret the raw signature bytes.
• signer – scheme-dependent signer metadata; for SECP256K1 and P256, this is a 20-byte address.
• msg – either empty, indicating the canonical transaction signature hash, or an explicit 32-byte digest.
• signature – raw signature bytes interpreted according to scheme.

The mode of each frame sets the context of execution. It allows the protocol to identify the purpose of the frame within the execution loop.

The flags field configures additional execution constraints. Bit positions are zero-based, with the least significant bit numbered 0.

The Valid with column indicates the mode under which the flag is valid. If a flag is not valid under the current mode, the transaction is invalid.

Constraints

Some validity constraints can be determined statically. They are outlined below:

assert tx.chain_id < 2**256
assert tx.nonce < 2**64
assert len(tx.frames) > 0 and len(tx.frames) <= MAX_FRAMES
assert len(tx.sender) == 20

for sig in tx.signatures:
    if sig.scheme in [SECP256K1, P256]:
        assert len(sig.signer) == 20
    else:
        invalid_transaction()
    if len(sig.msg) == 0:
        assert sig.msg == Bytes()
    elif len(sig.msg) == 32:
        assert sig.msg != b"\x00" * 32
    else:
        invalid_transaction()

total_frame_gas = 0
for frame in tx.frames:
    assert frame.mode < 3
    assert frame.flags < 8
    assert frame.target is None or len(frame.target) == 20
    assert frame.gas_limit <= 2**64 - 1
    assert frame.value < 2**256
    assert frame.mode == SENDER or frame.value == 0
    total_frame_gas += frame.gas_limit
    assert total_frame_gas <= 2**64 - 1

    # Atomic batch flag (bit 2 of flags) requires a subsequent frame to batch with.
    if frame.flags & ATOMIC_BATCH_FLAG:
        assert i + 1 < len(tx.frames)                  # must not be last frame

Transaction Signatures

The signatures list contains signatures that may be referenced by VERIFY frames and by ordinary EVM execution. Every signature in this list must validate successfully before any frame is executed. If any signature is malformed or invalid, the whole transaction is invalid.

The signatures list is optional. Contracts may still ignore it entirely and perform bespoke signature verification inside frame execution.

The raw signature byte strings are intentionally not introspectable by EVM code to allow future aggregation schemes. Contracts can inspect only the metadata of the signature list through transaction introspection.

The scheme identifies how the raw signature bytes are interpreted.

For SECP256K1 and P256, the signer is a 20-byte Ethereum address.

The msg which message the signature authorizes:

• if len(msg) == 0, the signature is signed over compute_sig_hash(tx)
• if len(msg) == 32, the signature is signed the explicit 32-byte digest msg
• any other msg length is invalid

The explicit 32-byte zero digest is invalid. This reserves the zero stack value as the EVM-visible representation of the transaction signing hash case.

For P256, the signer address must be keccak256(qx || qy)[12:].

Receipt Encoding

The ReceiptPayload is defined as:

[cumulative_gas_used, payer, [frame_receipt, ...]]
frame_receipt = [status, gas_used, logs]

payer is the address of the account that paid the fees for the transaction. status is the return code of the top-level call. A new code 0x3 is introduced for frames which are skipped due to failed atomic batch.

Signature Hash

The canonical signature hash is defined such that any signature with empty msg will have its raw signature bytes elided:

def compute_sig_hash(tx: FrameTx) -> Hash:
    for i, sig in enumerate(tx.signatures):
        if len(sig.msg) == 0:
            tx.signatures[i].signature = Bytes()
    return keccak(bytes([FRAME_TX_TYPE]) + rlp(tx))

Signature Validation

Every signature in the outer transaction object is validated before frame execution. The validation rules are:

SECP256K1 = 0x0
P256      = 0x1

def effective_signer(sig) -> Address:
    return sig.signer

def validate_signature(sig, tx, sig_hash) -> bool:
    if len(sig.msg) == 0:
        msg = sig_hash
    elif len(sig.msg) == 32:
        if sig.msg == b"\x00" * 32:
            return False
        msg = sig.msg
    else:
        return False

    if sig.scheme == SECP256K1:
        if len(sig.signature) != 65:
            return False
        v = sig.signature[0]
        r = sig.signature[1:33]
        s = sig.signature[33:65]
        return sig.signer == ecrecover(msg, v, r, s)

    elif sig.scheme == P256:
        if len(sig.signature) != 128:
            return False
        r  = sig.signature[0:32]
        s  = sig.signature[32:64]
        qx = sig.signature[64:96]
        qy = sig.signature[96:128]
        if sig.signer != keccak256(qx + qy)[12:]:
            return False
        return P256VERIFY(msg, r, s, qx, qy)

    else:
        return False

Expiry Verifier Frame

A VERIFY frame whose frame.target equals EXPIRY_VERIFIER is an expiry verifier frame. It calls the expiry verifier contract deployed at EXPIRY_VERIFIER with frame.data as calldata. The calldata is interpreted as an 8-byte unsigned big-endian expiry timestamp. The call reverts unless block.timestamp <= expiry_timestamp.

An expiry verifier frame is invalid unless all of the following hold:

• frame.flags == 0,
• frame.value == 0, and
• len(frame.data) == EXPIRY_DATA_LENGTH.

A transaction can contain at most one expiry verifier frame.

At activation, clients must install the following expiry verifier contract runtime code at EXPIRY_VERIFIER. The expiry verifier contract’s runtime code must be:

push1 0x08
calldatasize
eq
push1 0x0a
jumpi
push0
push0
revert

jumpdest
push0
calldataload
push1 0xc0
shr
timestamp
gt
push1 0x16
jumpi
stop

jumpdest
push0
push0
revert

The runtime bytecode is:

0x60083614600a575f5ffd5b5f3560c01c4211601657005b5f5ffd

Equivalently, the runtime behavior is:

if len(evm.calldata) != EXPIRY_DATA_LENGTH:
    revert()

expiry_timestamp = int.from_bytes(evm.calldata, "big")
if evm.timestamp > expiry_timestamp:
    revert()

stop()

If the check passes, the frame succeeds with no return data and no logs. The frame consumes gas according to normal EVM execution rules. Although TIMESTAMP is generally banned during validation-prefix execution, it is permitted in this special VERIFY frame when executing the canonical expiry verifier runtime code at EXPIRY_VERIFIER.

Clients may omit the explicit EVM execution and directly perform the expiry check above, provided the externally observable result is identical to executing the canonical contract. Note: While this is a valid optimization for Ethereum mainnet, it could be problematic on non-mainnet situations in case a different contract is used.

Behavior

When processing a frame transaction, perform the following steps.

To begin processing a frame transaction:

1. Ensure tx.nonce == state[tx.sender].nonce
2. Compute the canonical transaction signature hash: sig_hash = compute_sig_hash(tx).
3. For each sig in tx.signatures, ensure validate_signature(sig, tx, sig_hash) == true.
4. Initialize transaction-scoped variables:
   • payer = None
   • sender_approved = false
5. Let resolved_target = frame.target if frame.target is not None else tx.sender
   • Unless otherwise stated, checks that refer to the target account during execution use the resolved target.

Then for each frame:

1. Execute a call with the specified mode, flags, resolved_target, gas_limit, value, and data.
   • If mode is SENDER:
     • sender_approved must be true. If not, the transaction is invalid.
     • Set caller as tx.sender.
   • If mode is DEFAULT or VERIFY:
     • Set the caller to ENTRY_POINT.
   • In the top-level frame call, CALLVALUE is frame.value.
   • As with an ordinary CALL, if the caller does not have sufficient balance to transfer frame.value, the frame reverts.
   • If resolved_target code hash is empty, i.e. 0xc5d2460186f7233c927e7db2dcc703c0e500b653ca82273b7bfad8045d85a470, execute the logic described in default code.
   • Otherwise, if resolved_target uses an EIP-7702 delegation indicator, execute according to EIP-7702’s delegated-code semantics.
   • The ORIGIN opcode returns frame caller throughout all call depths.
   • If a frame’s execution reverts, its state changes are discarded. Additionally, if this frame has the atomic batch flag set, mark all subsequent frames in the same atomic group as skipped.
2. If frame has mode VERIFY the following additional requirements are imposed:
   • Execute the frame as a STATICCALL, disallowing state manipulation.
     • Only APPROVE can modify the state or transaction context in VERIFY.
   • If the frame reverts, the transaction is invalid.
3. If a frame is part of an atomic batch and it fails, unroll the associated atomic batch.
   • An atomic batch is a maximal contiguous sequence of frames [i, j] where j > i, frames i through j - 1 have ATOMIC_BATCH_FLAG set, and frame j does not have ATOMIC_BATCH_FLAG set.
   • When a frame in the batch fails, the state must be rolled back to the condition it was immediately before the atomic batch began. All remaining frames in the atomic batch are skipped.
   • Since skipped frames are not executed, the gas value allotted to them is refunded at the end of the transaction.
   • If the frame does not have an associated atomic batch, further special handling is not needed, simple revert the individual frame.

After executing all frames, verify that payer has been set (i.e. payer != None). If payer is set, refund any unpaid gas to the payer. If it is not, the whole transaction is invalid.

Cross-frame interactions

A few cross-frame interactions to note:

• For the purposes of gas accounting of warm / cold state status, the journal of such touches is shared across frames.
• Discard the TSTORE and TLOAD transient storage between frames.

Gas Accounting

The total gas limit of the transaction is:

def signature_gas(sig):
    if sig.scheme == SECP256K1:
        return 2800
    if sig.scheme == P256:
        return 6700
    invalid_transaction()

signature_verification_cost = sum(signature_gas(sig) for sig in tx.signatures)

tx_gas_limit = (
    FRAME_TX_INTRINSIC_COST
    + len(tx.frames) * FRAME_TX_PER_FRAME_COST
    + calldata_cost(rlp(tx.signatures))
    + calldata_cost(rlp(tx.frames))
    + signature_verification_cost
    + sum(frame.gas_limit for all frames)
)

Where calldata_cost is calculated per standard EIP-7623 rules.

The calldata cost for rlp(tx.signatures) is charged over the signature objects exactly as included in the transaction, including the scheme-dependent signer bytes.

The total fee is defined as:

tx_fee = tx_gas_limit * effective_gas_price + blob_fees
blob_fees = len(blob_versioned_hashes) * GAS_PER_BLOB * blob_base_fee

The effective_gas_price is calculated per EIP-1559 and blob_fees is calculated as per EIP-4844.

Any frame.value transferred by SENDER frames is separate from tx_fee and follows ordinary CALL value-transfer semantics. The gas cost of sending frame.value is the same as for any CALL instruction.

Each frame has its own gas_limit allocation. Unused gas from a frame is not available to subsequent frames. After all frames execute, the gas refund is calculated as:

refund = sum(frame.gas_limit for all frames) - total_gas_used

This refund is returned to the gas payer (the resolved_target that called APPROVE(APPROVE_PAYMENT) or APPROVE(APPROVE_EXECUTION_AND_PAYMENT)) and added back to the block gas pool.

Default code

Frame transactions can be used by accounts who do not have deployed code, nor an EIP-7702 delegation indicator via the “default code” mechanism. The behavior of the default code is defined below:

• If mode is VERIFY:
  • Read the allowed approval scope from the flags field: allowed_scope = frame.flags & APPROVE_SCOPE_MASK. If allowed_scope == APPROVE_SCOPE_NONE, revert.
  • If allowed_scope & APPROVE_EXECUTION != 0 and resolved_target != tx.sender, revert.
  • If there is no SECP256K1 signature sig such that sig.signer == resolved_target and sig.msg == Bytes(), revert.
  • Call APPROVE(allowed_scope).
• If mode is SENDER or DEFAULT:
  • Return successfully as if calling empty code.

APPROVE Instruction (0xaa)

The APPROVE instruction exits the current EVM call frame successfully and updates the transaction-scoped approval context based on the scope operand.

Stack

Scope Operand

The scope operand is a bitmask. Define the following constants:

• APPROVE_NONE (0x0): No approval scope allowed - the current frame is not allowed to approve any scope.
• APPROVE_PAYMENT (0x1): Approval of payment - the contract approves paying the total gas cost for the transaction.
• APPROVE_EXECUTION (0x2): Approval of execution - the sender contract approves future frames calling on its behalf.
  • Note this is only valid when resolved_target equals tx.sender.
• APPROVE_EXECUTION_AND_PAYMENT (0x3): Approval of payment and execution.

APPROVE_SCOPE_MASK is defined as an alias for APPROVE_EXECUTION_AND_PAYMENT.

Introspection

The instructions in this section provide the needed introspection capabilities of the new frame transaction type and the frame objects themselves, including some runtime information like the execution result status.

TXPARAM Instruction (0xb0)

This instruction gives access to transaction-scoped information. The gas cost of this operation is 2. It takes one value from the stack, param, and returns the associated transaction value to the stack. See the table for the full mapping.

Undefined param values result in an exceptional halt.

FRAMEDATALOAD Instruction 0xb1

This opcode loads one 32-byte word of data from frame input. Gas cost: 3 (matches CALLDATALOAD).

It takes two values from the stack, an offset and frameIndex. It places the retrieved data on the stack.

When the frameIndex is out-of-bounds, an exceptional halt occurs.

The operation semantics match CALLDATALOAD, returning a word of data from the chosen frame’s data, starting at the given byte offset.

FRAMEDATACOPY Instruction (0xb2)

This opcode copies data frame input into the contract’s memory. Its gas cost is calculated exactly as for CALLDATACOPY, including the fixed cost of 3, the per-word copy cost, and the standard EVM memory expansion cost.

It takes four values from the stack: memOffset, dataOffset, length and frameIndex. No stack output value is produced.

When the frameIndex is out-of-bounds, an exceptional halt occurs.

The operation semantics match CALLDATACOPY, copying length bytes from the chosen frame’s data, starting at the given byte dataOffset, into a memory region starting at memOffset.

FRAMEPARAM Instruction (0xb3)

This instruction gives access to frame-scoped information. The gas cost of this operation is 2. It takes two values from the stack, frameIndex on top and param second from top.

Notes:

• The status field (0x05) returns 0 for failure or 1 for success.
• Undefined param values result in an exceptional halt.
• Out-of-bounds access for frameIndex results in an exceptional halt.
• Attempting to access the return status of the current frame or a subsequent frame results in an exceptional halt.

SIGPARAM Instruction (0xb4)

This instruction gives access to signature-scoped metadata. The raw signature bytes are intentionally not accessible from the EVM. The gas cost of this operation is 2. It takes two values from the stack, signatureIndex on top and param second from top.

Notes:

• Undefined param values result in an exceptional halt.
• Out-of-bounds access for signatureIndex results in an exceptional halt.

Mempool

The transaction mempool must carefully handle frame transactions, as a naive implementation could introduce denial-of-service vulnerabilities. The fundamental goal of the public mempool rules is to avoid allowing an arbitrary number of transactions to be invalidated by a single environmental change or state modification. Beyond this, the rules also aim to minimize the amount of work needed to complete the initial validation phase of a transaction before an acceptance decision can be made.

This policy is inspired by ERC-7562, but removes staking and reputation entirely. Any behavior that ERC-7562 would admit only for a staked or reputable third party is rejected here for the public mempool. Transactions outside these rules may be accepted into a local or private mempool, but must not be propagated through the public mempool.

Constants

Validation Prefix

The validation prefix of a frame transaction is the shortest prefix of frames whose successful execution sets payer.

Public mempool rules apply only to the validation prefix. Once payer has been set, subsequent frames are outside public mempool validation and may be arbitrary. In particular, user_op and post_op occur after payment approval and are therefore not subject to the public mempool restrictions below.

For public mempool accounting, signature validation is treated as part of the transaction intrinsic cost and counts against MAX_VERIFY_GAS.

Policy Summary

A frame transaction is eligible for public mempool propagation only if its validation prefix depends exclusively on:

1. transaction fields, including the canonical signature hash,
2. the block timestamp as read by an expiry verifier frame,
3. the sender’s nonce, code, and storage,
4. if a deploy frame is present, the code of the factory targeted by that frame (subject to the deploy-frame trace rules below),
5. if a paymaster frame is present, either a canonical paymaster instance together with explicit paymaster balance reservation, or a non-canonical paymaster being used by less than MAX_PENDING_TXS_USING_NON_CANONICAL_PAYMASTER pending transactions,
6. the code of any other existing non-delegated contracts reached during validation via CALL* or EXTCODE*, provided the resulting trace does not access disallowed mutable state.

Any dependency on third-party mutable state outside these categories must result in rejection by the public mempool.

Mode Subclassifications

While the frames are designed to be generic, we refine some frame modes for the purpose of specifying public mempool handling clearly.

Public Mempool-recognized Validation Prefixes

The public mempool recognizes four validation prefixes. Structural rules are enforced only up to and including the frame that sets payer.

Self Relay

Basic Transaction

+-------------+
| self_verify |
+-------------+

Deploy New Account

+--------+-------------+
| deploy | self_verify |
+--------+-------------+

Canonical Paymaster

Basic Transaction

+-------------+-----+
| only_verify | pay |
+-------------+-----+

Deploy New Account

+--------+-------------+-----+
| deploy | only_verify | pay |
+--------+-------------+-----+

Frames after these prefixes are outside public mempool validation. For example, a transaction may continue with any number of user_ops and/or post_ops.

Structural Rules

To be accepted into the public mempool, a frame transaction must satisfy the following:

1. Its validation prefix must match one of the four recognized prefixes above.
2. If present, deploy must be the first frame. This implies there can be at most one deploy frame in the validation prefix.
3. self_verify and only_verify must execute in VERIFY mode, target tx.sender (either explicitly or via a null target), and must successfully call APPROVE.
   • self_verify must call APPROVE(APPROVE_EXECUTION_AND_PAYMENT).
   • only_verify must call APPROVE(APPROVE_EXECUTION).
4. pay must execute in VERIFY mode and successfully call APPROVE(APPROVE_PAYMENT).
5. No frame in the validation prefix may have the ATOMIC_BATCH_FLAG set.
6. The sum of gas_limit values across the validation prefix, plus the intrinsic cost of validating tx.signatures, must not exceed MAX_VERIFY_GAS.
7. Nodes should stop simulation immediately once payer has been set.

Expiry Verifier Frame

An expiry_verify frame MAY appear at any position in the frame list. For the purposes of matching the recognized validation-prefix shapes above, expiry verifier frames are skipped (e.g., [expiry_verify, self_verify] is recognized as [self_verify]).

A node MUST drop a frame transaction from the public mempool if it contains an expiry_verify frame whose deadline is less than the node’s view of the current block timestamp at any point.

Expiry verifier frames are not subject to the validation trace rules, storage-dependency tracking, or MAX_VERIFY_GAS. The TIMESTAMP opcode is permitted only for the canonical expiry verifier runtime code at EXPIRY_VERIFIER; clients may optimize the frame by performing the same deadline check without explicit EVM execution.

Canonical Paymaster Exception

The generic validation trace and opcode rules below apply to all frames in the validation prefix except a pay frame whose target runtime code exactly matches the canonical paymaster implementation. The canonical paymaster implementation is explicitly designed to be safe for public mempool use and is therefore admitted by code match, successful APPROVE(APPROVE_PAYMENT), and the paymaster accounting rules in this section, rather than by requiring it to satisfy each generic validation rule individually.

Validation Trace Rules

A public mempool node must simulate the validation prefix and reject the transaction if any of the following occurs before payer has been set:

• a frame in the validation prefix reverts
• a self_verify, only_verify, or pay frame exits without its required APPROVE
• total public-mempool validation work, including signature validation, exceeds MAX_VERIFY_GAS
• execution uses a banned opcode
• execution performs a state write, except inside the first deploy frame for (a) CREATE, CREATE2, or SETDELEGATE operations that install code at tx.sender, or (b) SSTOREs to tx.sender’s storage
• execution reads storage outside tx.sender
• execution performs CALL* or EXTCODE* to an address that is neither an existing contract nor a precompile, or to an address that uses an EIP-7702 delegation, except for tx.sender default-code behavior
• if a deploy frame is present, its execution does not result in non-empty code being installed at tx.sender (either conventional contract code or an EIP-7702 delegation indicator)

Banned Opcodes

For VERIFY frames, the usual STATICCALL restrictions apply except for the protocol-defined effects of APPROVE. In addition, the following opcodes are banned during the validation prefix, with a few caveats:

• ORIGIN (0x32)
• GASPRICE (0x3A)
• BLOCKHASH (0x40)
• COINBASE (0x41)
• TIMESTAMP (0x42)
  • Except in an expiry verifier frame executing the canonical runtime code at EXPIRY_VERIFIER.
• NUMBER (0x43)
• PREVRANDAO/DIFFICULTY (0x44)
• GASLIMIT (0x45)
• BASEFEE (0x48)
• BLOBHASH (0x49)
• BLOBBASEFEE (0x4A)
• GAS (0x5A)
  • Except when followed immediately by a *CALL instruction. This is the standard method of passing gas to a child call and does not create an additional public mempool dependency.
• CREATE (0xF0)
  • Except inside the first deploy frame.
• CREATE2 (0xF5)
  • Except inside the first deploy frame.
• SETDELEGATE (0xF6, EIP-7819)
  • Except inside the first deploy frame.
• INVALID (0xFE)
• SELFDESTRUCT (0xFF)
• BALANCE (0x31)
• SELFBALANCE (0x47)
• SSTORE (0x55)
• TLOAD (0x5C)
• TSTORE (0x5D)

SLOAD can be used only to access tx.sender storage, including when reached transitively via CALL* or DELEGATECALL.

CALL* and EXTCODE* may target any existing contract or precompile, provided the resulting trace still satisfies the storage, opcode, and EIP-7702 restrictions above. This permits helper contracts and libraries during validation, including via DELEGATECALL, so long as they do not introduce additional mutable-state dependencies.

Paymasters

A paymaster can choose to sponsor a transaction’s gas. Generally the relationship is one paymaster to many transaction senders, however, this is in direct conflict with the goal of not predicating the validity of many transactions on the value of one account or storage element.

We address this conflict in two ways:

1. If a paymaster sponsors gas for a large number of accounts simultaneously, it must be a safe, standardized paymaster contract. It is designed such that ether which enters it cannot leave except: a. in the form of payment for a transaction, or b. after a delay period.
2. If a paymaster sponsors gas for a small number of accounts simultaneously (no more than MAX_PENDING_TXS_USING_NON_CANONICAL_PAYMASTER), it may be any paymaster contract.

Canonical paymaster

The canonical paymaster is not a singleton deployment. Many instances may be deployed. For public mempool purposes, a paymaster instance is considered canonical if and only if the runtime code at the pay frame target exactly matches the canonical paymaster implementation.

The canonical paymaster in this draft authorizes with a single secp256k1 signer via ecrecover, does not support contract-signature schemes, and may change in later specifications, in which case a new canonical implementation version would be required.

Because the canonical paymaster implementation is explicitly standardized to be safe for public mempool use, nodes do not need to apply the generic validation trace and opcode rules to that pay frame. Instead, they identify it by runtime code match and apply the paymaster-specific accounting and revalidation rules in this section.

A transaction using a paymaster is eligible for public mempool propagation only if the pay frame targets a canonical paymaster instance and the node can reserve the maximum transaction cost against that paymaster.

For public mempool purposes, each node maintains a local accounting value reserved_pending_cost(paymaster) and computes:

available_paymaster_balance = state.balance(paymaster) - reserved_pending_cost(paymaster) - pending_withdrawal_amount(paymaster)

Where pending_withdrawal_amount(paymaster) is the currently pending delayed withdrawal amount of the canonical paymaster instance, or zero if no delayed withdrawal is pending.

A node must reject a paymaster transaction if available_paymaster_balance is less than the transaction’s maximum cost (TXPARAM(0x06)).

On admission, the node increments reserved_pending_cost(paymaster) by the transaction’s maximum cost (TXPARAM(0x06)). On eviction, replacement, inclusion, or reorg removal, the node decrements it accordingly.

Non-canonical paymaster

For non-canonical paymasters, pending_withdrawal_amount is not meaningful since they may not support timelocked withdrawals. Instead, we keep the mempool safe by enforcing that each non-canonical paymaster can only be used with no more than MAX_PENDING_TXS_USING_NON_CANONICAL_PAYMASTER pending transactions.

Therefore we perform two checks:

• For balance, available_paymaster_balance must not be less than the transaction cost, where:

available_paymaster_balance = state.balance(paymaster) - reserved_pending_cost(paymaster)

• The number of pending transactions in the mempool that uses this paymaster must be less than MAX_PENDING_TXS_USING_NON_CANONICAL_PAYMASTER.

See here for rationale for enabling non-canonical paymasters in the mempool.

Acceptance Algorithm

1. A transaction is received over the wire and the node decides whether to accept or reject it.
2. The node validates all signatures. If any signature is malformed or invalid, reject.
3. The node analyzes the frame structure and determines the validation prefix. If the prefix is not one of the recognized prefixes, reject.
4. The node simulates the validation prefix and enforces the structural and trace rules above, except that a pay frame whose target runtime code exactly matches the canonical paymaster implementation is handled via the canonical paymaster exception and the paymaster-specific rules below.
5. The node records the sender storage slots read during validation. Calls into helper contracts do not create additional mutable-state dependencies unless they cause disallowed storage access under the trace rules above.
6. If a canonical paymaster instance is used, the node verifies paymaster solvency using the reservation rule above.
7. A node should keep at most one pending frame transaction per sender in the public mempool. A new transaction from the same sender MAY replace the existing one only if it uses the same nonce and satisfies the node’s fee bump rules.
8. If all checks pass, the transaction may be accepted into the public mempool and propagated to peers.

Revalidation

When a new canonical block is accepted, the node removes any included frame transactions from the public mempool, updates paymaster reservations accordingly, and identifies the remaining pending transactions whose tracked dependencies were touched by the block. This includes at least transactions for the same sender, transactions whose recorded sender storage slots changed, and transactions that reference a canonical paymaster instance whose balance, code, or delayed-withdrawal state changed. The node then re-simulates the validation prefix of only those affected transactions against the new head and evicts any transaction that no longer satisfies the public mempool rules.

Transaction origination

Do not apply the restriction put in place by EIP-3607 to frame transactions. Specifically, SENDER frames originate calls where tx.sender is a contract account. Validation logic for other transaction types remains unchanged, i.e. the transaction is only valid if the sender account’s code is either empty or a valid delegation indicator.

Rationale

Canonical signature hash

The canonical signature hash is provided in TXPARAM to simplify the development of smart accounts.

Computing the signature hash in EVM is complicated and expensive. While using the canonical signature hash is not mandatory, it is strongly recommended. Creating a bespoke signature requires precise commitment to the underlying transaction data. Without this, it’s possible that some elements can be manipulated in-the-air while the transaction is pending and have unexpected effects. This is known as transaction malleability. Using the canonical signature hash avoids malleability of the frames.

The raw signature bytes of signatures with empty msg are elided from the canonical signature hash. This is done for three reasons:

1. A signature over compute_sig_hash(tx) cannot commit to its own raw bytes.
2. In the future it may be desired to aggregate or otherwise externalize these signatures for data and compute efficiency reasons.
3. Signatures with explicit 32-byte msg values do not induce this circularity, so their raw bytes are currently committed by the transaction signature hash.

The data of VERIFY frames, including expiry verifier deadlines, is not elided. Any validation data that is intended to be added after a sender signs should be represented as elided raw signature bytes in tx.signatures, rather than as mutable frame data.

APPROVE calling convention

Originally APPROVE was meant to extend the space of return statuses from 0 and 1 today to 0 to 4. However, this would mean smart accounts deployed today would not be able to modify their contract code to return with a different value at the top level. For this reason, we’ve chosen behavior above: APPROVE terminates the executing frame successfully like RETURN, but it actually updates the transaction scoped values sender_approved and payer during execution. It is still required that only the sender can toggle the sender_approved to true. Only the frame’s resolved target can call APPROVE generally, because it can allow the transaction pool and other frames to better reason about VERIFY mode frames.

Because DELEGATECALL preserves ADDRESS, code executed via DELEGATECALL from the resolved target may also execute APPROVE successfully. Contracts that rely on APPROVE should therefore treat delegatecalled libraries as fully trusted.

Payer in receipt

The payer cannot be determined statically from a frame transaction and is relevant to users. The only way to provide this information safely and efficiently over the JSON-RPC is to record this data in the receipt object.

No authorization list

The EIP-7702 authorization list heavily relies on ECDSA cryptography to determine the authority of accounts to delegate code. While delegations could be used in other manners later, it does not satisfy the PQ goals of the frame transaction.

No access list

The access list was introduced to address a particular backwards compatibility issue that was caused by EIP-2929. The risk-reward of using an access list successfully is high. A single miss, paying to warm a storage slot that does not end up getting used, causes the overall transaction cost to be greater than had it not been included at all.

Future optimizations based on pre-announcing state elements a transaction will touch will be covered by block level access lists.

Atomic batching

Atomic batching allows multiple frames to be grouped into a single all-or-nothing unit. This is useful when a sequence of calls is only meaningful if all succeed together, such as an approval followed by a swap, or a series of interdependent state changes. Without this feature, a revert in one frame would leave the preceding frames’ state changes applied, potentially leaving the account in an undesirable intermediate state.

Using a flag to indicate atomic batches saves us from having to introduce a new mode. Batches are identified purely by consecutive frames with the flag set, terminated by a frame without it. This design enables consecutive atomic batches since the batch boundary is clearly indicated by the frame without the flag.

Per-frame cost

Each frame incurs a fixed CALL execution-context overhead (100) plus G_log (375) for the receipt sub-entry it produces, giving FRAME_TX_PER_FRAME_COST = 475. The execution-context component covers context setup, mode dispatch, and gas accounting at the frame boundary, analogous to the fixed overhead of a CALL. The G_log component covers the [status, gas_used, logs] receipt sub-entry that each frame adds to the transaction receipt, which must be serialized, hashed into the receipt trie, and proven by ZK-EVM implementations. Cold/warm access costs for the frame’s target account are charged within the frame’s own gas_limit through the normal EVM warm/cold accounting, not through the per-frame cost.

Per-frame value

A design goal of the frame transaction is to provide a good experience out-of-the-box for users and to reduce the threat surface of smart contract wallets. Like batching, sending native value is a part of achieving that.

Restricting non-zero value to SENDER frames keeps VERIFY and DEFAULT frames side-effect-free with respect to ETH transfer semantics, preserves the intended STATICCALL-like behavior of VERIFY, and avoids requiring the protocol-defined ENTRY_POINT caller to fund top-level ETH transfers.

Public Key Aliases

Future signature schemes with large public keys may benefit from a state-backed alias mechanism. Such an alias could be a 20-byte address that identifies a public key stored in state, allowing transactions to reference the address instead of carrying the full public key each time.

A future extension could represent the alias account as non-executable code containing a canonical public key object, for example:

0xef02 || version || key_type || pubkey_len || pubkey

where key_type defines the cryptosystem, public key encoding, valid lengths, and validation rules for pubkey.

That extension could also define a PUBLISHPK instruction to validate a public key, wrap it in the canonical alias-code format, derive the alias address, and install the alias code.

Externally Owned Account (EOA) support

While we expect EOA users to migrate to smart accounts eventually, we recognize that most Ethereum users today are using EOAs, so we want to improve UX for them where we can.

Thanks to the default code, EOAs today can use frame transactions to reap many benefits of account abstraction, including sending sponsored transactions, paying gas in ERC-20 tokens, batch transactions, and more.

Non-canonical paymasters in the mempool

The primary use case for non-canonical paymasters is to enable users to pay gas with a dedicated “gas account,” so that their other accounts can transact without holding any ETH. For example, a user might have a single account that holds some ETH, while other accounts only hold stablecoins and NFTs, and they can transact freely with these other accounts while using the gas account as the paymaster.

Note that users can use any EOA as a paymaster thanks to the default code.

Examples

Example 1: Simple Transaction

Frame 0 uses a signature entry with empty msg for the sender and calls APPROVE(APPROVE_EXECUTION_AND_PAYMENT) to approve both payment and execution. Frame 1 executes and exits normally via RETURN.

The mempool can process this transaction with the following static validation and call:

• Verify that the first frame is a VERIFY frame.
• Verify that the call of frame 0 succeeds, and does not violate the mempool rules (similar to ERC-7562).

Example 1a: Simple ETH transfer

A simple transfer is performed by setting the SENDER frame target to the destination account and the frame value to the transfer amount. This requires two frames for mempool compatibility, since the validation phase of the transaction has to be static.

Example 1b: Simple account deployment

This example illustrates the initial deployment flow for a smart account at the sender address. Since the address needs to have code in order to validate the transaction, the transaction must deploy the code before verification.

The first frame would call the EIP-7997 deterministic factory predeploy. The deployer determines the address in a deterministic way from the salt and initcode. However, since the transaction sender is not authenticated at this point, the user must choose an initcode which is safe to deploy by anyone.

Example 2: Atomic Approve + Swap

Frame 0 uses a signature entry with empty msg and calls APPROVE(APPROVE_EXECUTION_AND_PAYMENT). Frames 1 and 2 form an atomic batch: if the swap in frame 2 reverts, the ERC-20 approval from frame 1 is also reverted, preventing the account from being left with a dangling approval.

Example 3: Sponsored Transaction (Fee Payment in ERC-20)

• Frame 0: Uses the sender’s signature entry with empty msg and calls APPROVE(APPROVE_EXECUTION) to authorize execution from sender.
• Frame 1: Checks that the user has enough ERC-20 tokens, inspects signature metadata in tx.signatures if needed, and checks that the next frame is an ERC-20 send of the right size to the sponsor. Calls APPROVE(APPROVE_PAYMENT) to authorize payment.
• Frame 2: Sends tokens to sponsor.
• Frame 3: User’s intended call.
• Frame 4 (optional): Check unpaid gas, refund tokens, possibly convert tokens to ETH on an AMM.

Data Efficiency

Basic transaction sending ETH from a smart account:

Notes: Nonce assumes < 65536 prior sends. Fees assume < 1099 gwei. Validation frame target is 1 byte because target is tx.sender. Validation gas assumes <= 65,536 gas. Validation frame value is zero. Execution frame target is encoded directly as the destination address. Execution frame value assumes a compact 5-byte encoding. The execution frame data is empty for a plain ETH transfer. The signature is a secp256k1 entry with empty msg using a 65-byte ECDSA signature. Blob fields assume no blobs (empty list, zero max fee).

This is not much larger than an EIP-1559 transaction; the extra overhead is mainly the need to specify the sender and the per-frame wrapper explicitly.

First transaction from an account (add deployment frame):

Notes: Gas assumes cost < 2^24. Calldata assumes small proxy.

Trustless pay-with-ERC-20 sponsor (add these frames):

Notes: Sponsor can read info from other fields. ERC-20 transfer call is 68 bytes.

There is some inefficiency in the sponsor case, because the same sponsor address must appear in three places (sponsor validation, send to sponsor inside ERC-20 calldata, post op frame), and the ABI is inefficient (~12 + 24 bytes wasted on zeroes). This is difficult to mitigate in a “clean” way, because one of the duplicates is inside the ERC-20 call, “opaque” to the protocol. However, it is much less inefficient than ERC-4337, because not all of the data takes the hit of the 32-byte-per-field ABI overhead.

Backwards Compatibility

The ORIGIN opcode behavior changes for frame transactions, returning the frame’s caller rather than the traditional transaction origin. This is consistent with the precedent set by EIP-7702, which already modified ORIGIN semantics. Contracts that rely on ORIGIN = CALLER for security checks (a discouraged pattern) may behave differently under frame transactions.

Security Considerations

Transaction Propagation

Frame transactions introduce new denial-of-service vectors for transaction pools that node operators must mitigate. Because validation logic is arbitrary EVM code, attackers can craft transactions that appear valid during initial validation but become invalid later. Without any additional policies, an attacker could submit many transactions whose validity depends on some shared state, then submit one transaction that modifies that state, and cause all other transactions to become invalid simultaneously. This wastes the computational resources nodes spent validating and storing these transactions.

Example Attack

A simple example is transactions that check block.timestamp:

function validateTransaction() external {
    require(block.timestamp < SOME_DEADLINE, "expired");
    // ... rest of validation
    APPROVE(APPROVE_EXECUTION_AND_PAYMENT);
}

Such transactions are valid when submitted but become invalid once the deadline passes, without any on-chain action required from the attacker.

Deploy Frame Front-Running

If a transaction uses a deploy frame, that frame executes before the sender is authenticated. An observer can front-run the same deterministic deployment and cause the deploy frame to fail because code is already present at tx.sender. Accordingly, the deploy frame’s calldata (and any initcode it carries) must be safe to submit by any party, and wallets should expect resubmission without the deploy frame once deployment has already occurred.

Explicit Sender State-Read Amplification

Because tx.sender is explicit in the transaction envelope, an attacker can submit many invalid frame transactions that name arbitrary sender addresses and force nodes to read sender state, including the nonce check required before execution. Public mempool implementations should therefore perform all available structural and stateless checks before sender-state access and should consider peer-level rate limiting or other DoS mitigations for repeated invalid transactions that vary tx.sender.

Cross-frame Data Visibility During Validation

FRAMEPARAM, FRAMEDATALOAD, and FRAMEDATACOPY allow validation code to inspect other frames, including later SENDER frames and their values. As a result, paymasters and other VERIFY frames can observe user operation parameters before approval and may condition their behavior on that information. Users should therefore treat non-VERIFY frame parameters and data as visible to validation logic and should not rely on untrusted paymasters or verifiers to keep such information private.

Mitigations

Node implementations should consider restricting which opcodes and storage slots validation frames can access, similar to ERC-7562. This isolates transactions from each other and limits mass invalidation vectors.

It’s recommended that to validate the transaction, a specific frame structure is enforced and the amount of gas that is expended executing the validation phase must be limited. Once the validation prefix reaches payer approval via APPROVE(APPROVE_PAYMENT) or APPROVE(APPROVE_EXECUTION_AND_PAYMENT), the transaction can be included in the mempool and propagated to peers safely.

For deployment of the sender account in the first frame, the mempool enforces deploy-frame determinism via the validation trace rules. Any contract may be used as frame.target, provided the frame’s execution satisfies those rules — notably, it must not read mutable state outside tx.sender or maintain per-deploy factory storage (counters, reentrancy flags, etc.), so that the deployment result is independent of chain state. Factories deployed via the EIP-7997 deterministic factory predeploy are the canonical choice for acquiring a cross-chain-stable factory address.

In general, it can be assumed that handling of frame transactions imposes similar restrictions as EIP-7702 on mempool relay, i.e. only a single transaction can be pending for an account that uses frame transactions.

Copyright

Copyright and related rights waived via CC0.

Citation

Please cite this document as:

Vitalik Buterin (@vbuterin), lightclient (@lightclient), Felix Lange (@fjl), Yoav Weiss (@yoavw), Alex Forshtat (@forshtat), Dror Tirosh (@drortirosh), Shahaf Nacson (@shahafn), Derek Chiang (@derekchiang), Toni Wahrstätter (@nerolation), "EIP-8141: Frame Transaction [DRAFT]," Ethereum Improvement Proposals, no. 8141, January 2026. Available: https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-8141.