What is a Smart Wallet?
A smart wallet is a blockchain wallet implemented as a smart contract, rather than relying on a traditional private key and externally owned account (EOA).
Unlike EOAs, smart wallets are programmable, meaning they can:
- Support social login and recovery (instead of seed phrases)
- Automate logic such as batch transactions or daily spending limits
- Interact with DeFi protocols or apps with predefined rules
- Delegate permissions to other signers or session keys
Smart wallets are the foundation of Account Abstraction (ERC-4337), and enable better user experience without compromising self-custody or security.
How Smart Wallets Work
Smart Wallets are deployed as smart contracts directly onchain.
Instead of manually deploying a new contract for each user, most systems use a Factory contract to automate and optimize wallet creation.
What is a Factory?
A Factory is a smart contract used to create and deploy Smart Wallets at scale.
Factories allow:
- Standardized creation — All wallets follow a consistent contract structure.
- Deterministic addresses — Wallets can be predicted before deployment using CREATE2.
- On-demand deployment — Wallets are only deployed when needed, saving gas costs.
Using a Factory improves performance, reduces gas expenses, and simplifies managing thousands or millions of Smart Wallets.
Supported Factories
The Notus API currently supports two Smart Wallet factories, optimized for different use cases:
-
Light Account Factory
A lightweight, cost-efficient factory ideal for simple and large-scale deployments. -
Kernel Account Factory
A modular, extensible factory designed for advanced features and custom logic.
Choosing the right factory depends on your product’s requirements for scalability, modularity, and user experience.
Why Use the Same Factory Across All Chains?
To ensure smart wallets maintain the same address across multiple chains, the same Factory contract and initialization code must be used.
This guarantees:
- Deterministic Address Generation — Wallet addresses are calculated using the CREATE2 opcode, based on the Factory address, salt, and initialization code. Consistency across chains ensures predictable address generation.
- Cross-Chain Compatibility — A unified wallet address allows users to interact with the same wallet across different blockchains without additional configurations.
- Seamless User Experience — Users can manage assets across multiple chains with a single wallet, simplifying interoperability and asset management.
Why It Matters
Traditionally, onboarding users into crypto involved:
- Creating EOAs manually
- Backing up seed phrases
- Funding wallets with ETH
- Deploying contracts individually
Smart Wallets and Factories change this by allowing:
- Seamless Web2-style login experiences
- Gasless and programmatic wallet deployment
- Scalable and user-friendly Web3 onboarding
With Notus Smart Wallets, you can build modern crypto experiences without compromising security, usability, or scalability.
For more information, see our Account Abstraction overview and related documentation.