EIP-7702 was supposed to make smart wallets easier by letting regular Ethereum accounts act like smart contracts when needed by enabling EOAs (Externally Owned Accounts) to temporarily delegate execution to smart contract logic.
Sounds great in theory, right? In practice, it’s been a nightmare. Developers are hitting wall after wall, especially when using Base, Alchemy, and the Viem library.
The promise was flexibility. The reality? Broken tools, outdated SDKs, and way more work than anyone expected.
❗Where Everything Goes Wrong: Viem and Session Signing
Here’s the thing: Base and Alchemy both built their smart wallet SDKs on top of Viem. Viem handles all the important logic – message signing, transaction execution, and session flows (such as batch transactions or authorization logic).
But Viem wasn’t ready for EIP-7702. Not even close.
- Incompatible Signing Formats: Older or unpatched versions of Viem cannot properly encode and verify EIP-7702’s authorization formats. This leads to “invalid signature” errors during batched transactions or signAuthorization calls.
- Dynamic Account Behavior: EIP-7702 makes EOAs temporarily behave like smart contracts. Viem was never designed to handle such dynamic transitions, causing inconsistencies in how accounts are signed or identified across providers.
- Version Fragmentation: Documentation from both Alchemy and Base often recommend pinning Viem to a specific version (e.g., v2.22.6) to avoid breakage. Many starter projects or older SDKs still ship with “ancient” versions of Viem, which are fundamentally incompatible with EIP-7702 flows.
- State Leakage: Developers have reported session loss or authorization leakage between page reloads due to inadequate session persistence logic in Viem-powered SDKs.
⚠️ Base and Alchemy: When Production Goes Wrong
Both Base and Alchemy have made significant efforts to bring EIP-7702 to life through modular wallet SDKs and developer tooling. But their own SDKs come with warning labels:
- Half-Baked Support: Some SDKs work with EIP-7702, others don’t. Good luck figuring out which is which.
- Everything Breaks on Updates: Every time they fix something, you have to updateViem, reconfigure your provider, and probably rewrite your backend verification.
- Fragmented Flows: Since Base and Alchemy have implemented different internal assumptions, moving a smart wallet between providers can cause unexpected behavior or total flow breakage.
“If you’re building with Base or Alchemy, make sure you’re using the exact Viem version they specify—anything else will fail in weird ways.”
— Developer feedback from GitHub
🛑 Why You Should Care (Even If You’re Not Building This)
If you’re building a dApp that depends on session-based permissions, advanced account abstraction, or smart wallet features, EIP-7702’s current ecosystem is fragile:
- Unexpected Reverts: NFT transfers to a temporarily delegated EOA may fail due to unexpected contract logic execution.
- Security Risks: A misconfigured session or outdated Viem version could result in a transaction being incorrectly signed, verified, or even hijacked.
- Poor UX: Users may experience signature popups that don’t work, broken sessions across reloads, or wallets that lose advanced functionality when imported into another provider.
✅ Best Practices Moving Forward
If you’re brave enough to build with EIP-7702 right now, here’s how to survive:
- Pin to a Stable Viem Version
Preferably use 2.22.6 or later, depending on provider guidance. Avoid legacy or unverified versions. - Test Across Providers
Check for inconsistencies between how Base and Alchemy handle chainId, session recovery, and authorization signatures. - Watch for SDK Patch Notes
Both Base and Alchemy publish frequent updates to their wallet SDKs and onchain-kit libraries. Stay updated. - Fallback to EIP-4337 Where Possible
For more mature multi-provider support, consider using account abstraction via EIP-4337, which currently has better tooling and security guarantees.
🧠 Conclusion
While EIP-7702 shows great promise, its real-world adoption is being throttled by SDK immaturity, fragmented Viem support, and subtle session handling bugs. Developers integrating with Base or Alchemy should approach carefully – ensuring strict dependency management and rigorous end-to-end testing – until the ecosystem stabilizes.
As Ethereum evolves, the community must close these gaps between protocol innovation and tooling readiness, or risk undermining user trust in the next generation of smart wallets.
0em Labs Blog 