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
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