The Ethereum Foundation rolled out an open standard built on ERC-7730 to replace blind signing with human-readable transaction approvals, backed by Ledger, Trezor, MetaMask, and others.
Posted May 13, 2026 at 5:58 am EST.
The Ethereum Foundation rolled out Clear Signing Tuesday, an open standard designed to end blind signing by replacing the unreadable hexadecimal data users currently approve with structured, human-readable transaction descriptions.
The standard combines two existing Ethereum improvement proposals. ERC-7730, originally proposed by hardware wallet maker Ledger, defines a JSON format for structured transaction descriptors. ERC-8176 provides the attestation and integrity framework that lets independent reviewers verify descriptor accuracy. Anyone can submit a descriptor, accuracy is verified through independent attestations, and individual wallets decide which sources to trust. The Ethereum Foundation’s Trillion Dollar Security Initiative will act as steward of the descriptor registry, hosted at clearsigning.org.
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The effort is a working group, not a solo Ethereum Foundation project. Contributors include Ledger, Trezor, MetaMask, WalletConnect, Fireblocks, Keycard, Argot, security firm Cyfrin, code-verification project Sourcify, ZK infrastructure providers ZKnox and Zama, and independent developers.
The Foundation framed Clear Signing as a direct response to a pattern in major crypto exploits. The blog post specifically cites the $1.5 billion Bybit hack in February 2025, where Lazarus Group attackers exploited blind signing to drain 400,000 ETH from the exchange. “Across major exploits in crypto and blockchain applications, the final step often isn’t a bug in code, but a user approving a transaction,” the Ethereum Foundation wrote.
Trezor CTO Tomáš Sušánka told CoinDesk the company plans to ship transaction decoding into readable formats early in Q2 2026 and full human-readable signing later in Q2. Alongside the rollout, the Ethereum Foundation also launched a $1 million audit subsidy program to help open-source projects fund professional code reviews, tying user-facing safety improvements to developer-side protections.
