Ethereum launched the Clear Signing standard to replace unreadable wallet transaction code with human-readable prompts.
Ethereum News
The Ethereum Foundation and a group of major crypto wallet developers announced on May 12 the rollout of a new security standard called Clear Signing. The standard is designed to replace unreadable transaction code with plain-language descriptions before a user approves any action.
The initiative targets blind signing, which the Foundation identified as one of the most commonly exploited vulnerabilities in the #Ethereum ecosystem.
Most wallets currently show users raw hexadecimal code when asking them to approve a transaction. That data is unreadable to the vast majority of users. Clear Signing replaces that output with descriptions covering which assets are moving, who receives them, and what permissions are being granted before the user confirms.
What Is ERC-7730?
The technical foundation of Clear Signing is ERC-7730, an open standard that hardware wallet maker Ledger first proposed in 2024. The Ethereum Foundation named ERC-7730 as the shared format for structured, human-readable transaction descriptions. It also launched a public registry at Clearsigning(dot)org where contract descriptors can be submitted, reviewed, and verified by independent security researchers.
Wallets will pull verified descriptions from the registry and display them directly to users at the point of signing. Because the descriptors live off-chain, the system works with existing contracts without requiring any on-chain changes. The Foundation also published tooling libraries to help wallet developers and application builders adopt the standard.
The Ethereum Foundation's Trillion Dollar Security Initiative will manage the registry infrastructure. Contributors to the effort include ZKnox, Sourcify, Cyfrin, Zama, WalletConnect, Fireblocks, Trezor, Keycard, MetaMask and Argot. Ledger first proposed ERC-7730 in 2024, and the Foundation credited independent contributors across the ecosystem with advancing the work.
The Bybit hack was cited as a direct example of the damage blind signing can cause. The Lazarus Group stole $1.4 billion from the exchange by tricking it into blind signing a malicious transaction. The Foundation pointed to that incident to illustrate how attackers exploit the gap between what a transaction does and what a user is shown before approving it.
Trezor CTO Tomáš Sušánka said the standard addresses "a fundamental vulnerability that has plagued cryptocurrency users for years." He added that when users cannot understand what they are signing, security becomes much harder to enforce. "This standard changes that, and every wallet provider should embrace it," he said.
The Clear Signing launch follows a series of security investments by the Foundation in recent months, including post-quantum cryptography research and a $1 million audit subsidy program. On May 11, the Foundation also announced changes to its core Protocol team, with Barnabé Monnot, Tim Beiko, and Alex Stokes stepping down as cluster leads, replaced by Will Corcoran, Kev Wedderburn, and Fredrik.
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