Abstract Accounts

Abstract Accounts are programmable smart-contract wallets used as the backbone for Abstract Apps, which will be covered later. Abstract Accounts hold funds for users and/or applications while exposing a set of programmable endpoints that can be used to configure and interact with the account.

Abstract Apps use the Abstract Account on which they are installed as the settlement layer for their transactions. In other words, Abstract Apps rarely hold funds themselves. Instead they control the funds of the Account that they are installed on. This separation of concerns allows for a more secure and modular design.

In the upcoming sections, we will delve deeper into the architecture of Abstract Accounts, providing insights into its design principles and components.

Architecture

Abstract’s infrastructure provides users with the ability to create a sovereign smart-contract wallet. We call this smart-contract wallet an Abstract Account.

flowchart LR
    Owner -."owns".-> Account

As shown in the image above, an owner of an account, can configure his Abstract Account by sending messages to the contract. We don’t make any assumptions about the nature of this owner, it can be a wallet, multi-sig or any other ownership structure, allowing you to customize your ownership structure to fit your needs.

The account’s architecture centers around configurable programmability. In other words, how can one configure the account (install applications, set permissions, etc.) to enable users and developers to easily customize it to do what they want?

To do this the account needs the following components:

• Authentication 🔐: Authenticating privileged calls and ensuring only approved entities can interact with the account.

• Application Management 📦: Managing and storing information about the applications installed on the account, their inter-dependencies, permissions and configurations.

• Account Details 📄: Storing the account’s details, such as its name, description, and other relevant information.

• Asset Management 💰: Holding the account’s assets, including tokens, NFTs, and other fungible and non-fungible assets.

• Transaction Forwarding (Proxying) 🔀: Executing approved transactions from the owner or other smart-contracts.

sequenceDiagram
    actor Owner
    participant Account
    participant External Contract


    Owner ->> Account: Account Action
    Account ->> External Contract: Execute

sequenceDiagram
    autonumber
    actor U as Owner
    participant M as Account
    participant REG as Registry

    U ->> M: UpdateSettings
    Note right of U: ibc_enabled
    M -->>+ REG: Query IBC Client address
    REG -->>- M: Return IBC Client address
    M ->> M: Register IBC Client