An Ethereum Working Group consisting of wallet developers, security firms and the Ethereum Foundation’s Trillion Dollar Security Initiative today launched an open standard designed to end blind signing — a structural flaw that has contributed to billions in user losses, including the Bybit hack. Ethereum Foundation’s Trillion Dollar Security Initiative is taking an active role as a credibly neutral steward of the Clear Signing registry.
Across major exploits in crypto and blockchain applications, the final step often isn’t a bug in code, but a user approving a transaction. Even when phishing or an infrastructure compromise initiates the breach, the last step is typically a confirmation the user cannot meaningfully understand. Approving a transaction is meant to be the last line of defense when exercising control over what happens to your assets on the blockchain. When it is done blindly, that defense does not hold.
For users and institutions to feel comfortable storing and interacting with assets on Ethereum that amount to trillions, “What You See Is What You Sign” (WYSIWYS) must be our goal, and Clear Signing must be the default.
Today, approving a transaction often means trying to understand what you’re about to do based on information that isn’t designed for people to read. In higher-risk situations, users may rely on a separate device to double-check the details, especially if the app they’re using could be compromised. In practice, this information is often shown in low-level, machine-readable formats that are accurate but difficult to interpret without technical expertise.
What is needed is a way for both existing and new applications on Ethereum to provide clear, human-readable and structured descriptions of what a transaction will do, so that wallets can present this information consistently and reliably to users. Achieving this requires a shared format for these descriptions (ERC-7730), a registry to store and distribute them, a way to verify that they are accurate, and tools that make it easy for wallets and developers to adopt this approach, alongside a credibly neutral party to support the infrastructure.
Anyone can contribute descriptors to this system. Their accuracy is verified through independent reviews and attestations, and wallets decide which sources they trust. While these descriptors are provided alongside the transaction, rather than embedded directly in it, this approach makes it possible to support both existing and new applications, while still allowing their accuracy to be independently verified.
Ethereum Foundation’s One Trillion Dollar Security Initiative is committed to hosting this infrastructure and supporting its development, with tooling built and maintained by contributors across the ecosystem, and adoption encouraged through clearsigning.org, to help make Clear Signing the default on Ethereum.
We encourage wallet developers to adopt this approach and integrate support for clear, human-readable transaction confirmations. Developers building applications are encouraged to provide accurate descriptions of what their transactions do, and security experts are encouraged to review and attest to their correctness. Information about available tooling, including Rust and TypeScript libraries funded through 1TS, can be found on clearsigning.org.
By moving to Clear Signing, we are strengthening the last line of defense and making the Ethereum ecosystem safer, more accessible, and better prepared for the next wave of users and institutional adoption.
We want to credit and acknowledge Ledger for initiating ERC-7730 and early tooling, infrastructure, and educational efforts. This is a deliberately multi-party effort with contributions across research, library development, audits, and coordination, involving teams such as ZKnox, Sourcify, Cyfrin, Zama, WalletConnect, Fireblocks, Trezor, Keycard, MetaMask, Argot, and independent contributors across the ecosystem.
