Ethereum Working Group Launches Open Standard to Eliminate Blind Signing and Secure Ecosystem Assets

An Ethereum Working Group comprised of prominent wallet developers, leading security firms, and the Ethereum Foundation’s Trillion Dollar Security Initiative has officially launched a new open standard designed to eliminate blind signing. This structural vulnerability has historically contributed to billions of dollars in user losses across the blockchain industry, including high-profile incidents such as the Bybit hack. As part of this coordinated industry rollout, the Ethereum Foundation’s Trillion Dollar Security Initiative is stepping into an active role as a credibly neutral steward of the Clear Signing registry to help safeguard the network against ongoing threats.

Across major exploits in crypto and blockchain applications, the final step often is not a fundamental bug in the underlying smart contract code, but rather a user approving a transaction that they do not fully comprehend. Even when an initial breach stems from sophisticated phishing campaigns or infrastructure compromises, the last line of defense typically relies on a confirmation screen that the average user cannot meaningfully interpret. Approving a transaction is supposed to serve as the ultimate checkpoint where individuals and institutions exercise absolute control over what happens to their digital assets on the blockchain. When transactions are executed blindly without clear comprehension, that vital defense completely fails.

For everyday users and major institutional participants to feel genuinely comfortable storing, managing, and interacting with assets on Ethereum that amount to trillions of dollars, the foundational principle of "What You See Is What You Sign"—often abbreviated as WYSIWYS—must become the absolute industry goal. Achieving this requires Clear Signing to transition from an optional feature into the default standard across the entire ecosystem.

Currently, approving a transaction on the blockchain frequently requires users to decipher complex data that was never designed for human readability. In higher-risk scenarios or when dealing with substantial sums, users are sometimes forced to rely on separate hardware devices to double-check transaction details, particularly if the decentralized application interface they are utilizing could be compromised. In practice, this essential information is routinely displayed in low-level, machine-readable formats. While these technical readouts are technically accurate, they remain extraordinarily difficult for human beings to interpret without specialized technical expertise.

To solve this persistent industry challenge, the ecosystem requires a standardized method enabling both existing and newly deployed applications on Ethereum to provide clear, human-readable, and structured descriptions of precisely what a transaction will execute. This ensures that user-facing wallets can present this critical information consistently and reliably to individuals before they commit their funds. Achieving this ambitious vision requires a shared format for these structured descriptions, known as ERC-7730, alongside a dedicated registry to store and distribute them securely. It also necessitates a verifiable mechanism to ensure their absolute accuracy, comprehensive tooling that makes adoption seamless for wallets and developers alike, and a credibly neutral party to support the underlying infrastructure.

Under the new open standard, anyone in the global developer and security community can contribute descriptors to this system. The accuracy of these contributions is independently verified through rigorous independent reviews and security attestations, leaving individual wallets to decide which specific sources they ultimately trust. While these detailed descriptors are provided alongside the transaction payload rather than embedded directly into the immutable code of the transaction itself, this flexible approach makes it possible to support both legacy applications and innovative new protocols. At the same time, it preserves the critical capability for independent security experts to verify their correctness.

The Ethereum Foundation’s One Trillion Dollar Security Initiative is fully committed to hosting this critical infrastructure and supporting its ongoing development. Essential tooling is being built and maintained by active contributors spanning the broader ecosystem, while widespread adoption is being actively encouraged through clearsigning.org to help make Clear Signing the universal default across the Ethereum network.

Wallet developers throughout the industry are strongly encouraged to adopt this new approach and rapidly integrate comprehensive support for clear, human-readable transaction confirmations into their software and hardware products. Similarly, developers building decentralized applications are encouraged to provide accurate, transparent descriptions of what their transactions actually do, while security experts are urged to participate in reviewing and attesting to their correctness. Detailed information regarding available tooling, including specialized Rust and TypeScript libraries funded through the One Trillion Dollar Security Initiative, can be found directly on clearsigning.org.

By successfully moving toward universal Clear Signing, the broader ecosystem is significantly strengthening its last line of defense. This transition makes the Ethereum network safer, dramatically more accessible to newcomers, and better prepared for the upcoming wave of mainstream users and institutional adoption.

Industry participants have extended widespread recognition to Ledger for initially pioneering ERC-7730, along with early foundational tooling, infrastructure development, and educational efforts. This milestone represents a deliberately multi-party effort involving extensive contributions across academic and practical research, library development, independent security audits, and cross-ecosystem coordination, featuring key teams such as ZKnox, Sourcify, Cyfrin, Zama, WalletConnect, Fireblocks, Trezor, Keycard, MetaMask, Argot, and numerous independent contributors across the decentralized landscape.