The Ethereum community has launched Clear Signing, an open standard that aims to replace unreadable transaction prompts with human-readable details before users approve onchain actions.
Summary
- Ethereum Clear Signing turns unreadable transaction data into plain summaries before users approve wallet actions.
- Ledger, Trezor, MetaMask, WalletConnect and Fireblocks are early supporters of the new ERC-7730 security standard.
- The rollout follows Bybit’s hack, where attackers abused signing screens to approve a malicious transfer.
The Ethereum Foundation said a working group of wallet developers, security firms and its Trillion Dollar Security Initiative released the standard on May 12. The change targets self-custody users and institutions that need readable approval records.
The effort targets blind signing, a weak point where users approve calldata or partial transaction data they cannot understand. The Foundation said approvals are often the last defense when users control assets onchain, but “When it is done blindly, that defense does not hold.” It wants “What You See Is What You Sign” to become the default for Ethereum users.
ERC-7730 brings clearer transaction details
Clear Signing uses ERC-7730, a shared JSON description format, a public registry, and independent reviews. The setup lets wallets show what a transaction intends to do without changing existing smart contracts or how transactions settle on Ethereum.
Ethereum.org says a descriptor links a contract deployment to readable labels and field formats. A compatible wallet can then show action details such as the asset sent, the minimum received, the recipient and expiry time, instead of raw function selectors and integer values. Developers can add support to existing protocols without redeploying contracts.
Additionally, Ledger helped start ERC-7730 and early tooling, while teams including ZKnox, Sourcify, Cyfrin, Zama, WalletConnect, Fireblocks, Trezor, Keycard, MetaMask, Argot and independent contributors took part in the wider effort. The Foundation said its security initiative will host the infrastructure and support adoption.
The move follows several wallet and signing attacks that exposed weak approval screens. Earlier reports noted that North Korea’s Lazarus Group stole more than $1.4 billion in ETH from Bybit by exploiting Safe Wallet’s user interface and that Bybit’s CEO could not fully verify transaction details before signing. That case made signing transparency a direct exchange security issue.
Why timing matters
Market updates have tied Clear Signing to the wider rise of phishing and approval scams. As previously reported, ERC-7730 replaces “hex gibberish” with auditable transaction summaries and said Binance security data showed 22.9 million phishing attempts were blocked in the first quarter of 2026.
Related coverage also said crypto protocols lost more than $606 million in the first 18 days of April 2026, the worst month since the Bybit breach. Clear Signing does not remove every attack path, and wallets still choose which registries they trust. But it gives users and institutions a clearer chance to see what they are about to approve before assets move.
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