Ethereum Foundation Launches Clear Signing Standard to End Blind Transaction Approvals

May 13, 2026

The Ethereum Foundation launched ERC-7730 on May 13, 2026, an open standard originally proposed by Ledger in 2024 that makes transaction approvals human-readable instead of blind signing. The standard addresses vulnerabilities like the Lazarus Group's $1.4 billion theft from Bybit in 2025. The Foundation deployed clearsigning.org, a public registry where contract descriptors are submitted and reviewed by security experts for wallet integration.

Clear Signing technology

▪The Ethereum Foundation describes Clear Signing as 'What You See Is What You Sign.'
▪Clear Signing can show users descriptions like 'you are swapping 100 USDC for 0.05 (ETH) on Uniswap' rather than opaque calldata.
▪Clear Signing provides simple descriptions of what a transaction is meant to do rather than returning raw hexadecimal data or low-level details.
▪The Ethereum Foundation pointed to Clear Signing contributions from ZKnox, Sourcify, Cyfrin, Zama, WalletConnect, Fireblocks, Trezor, Keycard, MetaMask, Argot, and independent contributors across the ecosystem.
▪Clear Signing provides human-legible descriptions for transactions sent from hardware wallets, as opposed to blind signing.

ERC-7730 standard

▪ERC-7730 serves as an open standard for structured, human-readable transaction descriptions.
▪ERC-7730 is an open standard originally proposed by Ledger.
▪The Ethereum Foundation named ERC-7730 as its shared format for contract descriptors on May 13, 2026.

Public registry for descriptors

▪The Ethereum Foundation-supported clearsigning.org serves as a public registry where anyone can submit descriptors for contracts.
▪Wallets can pull verified descriptions from the clearsigning.org registry and display them clearly to users.
▪Contract descriptors submitted to clearsigning.org are reviewed and attested for by independent security experts.
▪The Ethereum Foundation rolled out a public registry where contract descriptors can be submitted, reviewed, and distributed on May 13, 2026.

Blind signing security risks

▪The Lazzarus Group hackers stole $1.4 billion from Bybit in 2025 by tricking the exchange into blind signing a malicious transaction.

Ethereum Foundation security initiatives

▪The Ethereum Foundation launched a $1 million subsidy to help defray the costs of audits.
▪The Ethereum Foundation is hosting tooling libraries to support Clear Signing as of May 13, 2026.
▪The Ethereum Foundation formed a 'Trillion Dollar Security' team in 2025 focused in part on improving Ethereum UX.
▪The Ethereum Foundation has been boosting its support for research into post-quantum solutions in the past several months.

Protocol team leadership changes

▪Will Corcoran, Kev Wedderburn, and Fredrik were named as Protocol co-leads for the Ethereum Foundation.
▪The Ethereum Foundation announced a major shakeup to its core Protocol team on May 12, 2026.
▪Barnabé Monnot, Tim Beiko, and Alex Stokes stepped down as leaders of the Ethereum Foundation Protocol cluster.