Ethereum Foundation rolls out support for Clear Signing crypto security solution

The Ethereum Foundation is looking to become a credibly neutral steward for the growing Clear Signing ecosystem, as it pushes for standardization and increases its support to make adoption easier for wallets and developers.

As part of its efforts to boost blockchain security, the EF has rolled out a public registry where contract descriptors can be submitted, reviewed, and distributed. It also named ERC-7730, an open standard originally proposed by Ledger, as its shared format for these descriptions, and is hosting tooling libraries to support Clear Signing, according to a blog on Tuesday.

What is Clear Signing?

Clear Signing is something of a catchall term for human-legible descriptions for transactions sent from hardware wallets.

This is opposed to the opaque process of "blind signing" transactions, which to date has been the default when approving transactions in most wallets. Rather than returning raw hexadecimal data or low-level details, Clear Signing would provide a simple, easy-to-grasp description of what a transaction is meant to do.

Or as the EF puts it, "What You See Is What You Sign." For example, users could be shown descriptions like "you are swapping 100 USDC for 0.05 (ETH) on Uniswap," rather than opaque calldata returned from blind signing.

Security advocates have increasingly pushed for Clear Signing standards, given that blind signing is a commonly exploitable attack vector. The Lazzarus Group hackers notably stole $1.4 billion from Bybit last year by tricking the exchange into blind signing a malicious transaction.

"What is needed is a way for both existing and new applications on Ethereum to provide clear, human-readable and structured descriptions of what a transaction will do, so that wallets can present this information consistently and reliably to users," the EF wrote. 

EF's efforts

To that end, ERC-7730 will serve as an open standard for structured, human-readable transaction descriptions, while the EF-supported clearsigning.org will serve as a public registry where anyone can submit descriptors for contracts, which are then reviewed and attested for by independent security experts, the blog said.

Wallets will now be able to pull verified descriptions and display them clearly. The EF notes these security solutions will work with existing contracts, because the descriptors live off-chain in the registry.

"Developers building applications are encouraged to provide accurate descriptions of what their transactions do, and security experts are encouraged to review and attest to their correctness," the EF wrote. "By moving to Clear Signing, we are strengthening the last line of defense and making the Ethereum ecosystem safer, more accessible, and better prepared for the next wave of users and institutional adoption."

In the past several months, the EF has been boosting its support for security and privacy efforts, including research into post-quantum solutions. Last year, the nonprofit formed an entire "Trillion Dollar Security" team, which is in part focused on improving Ethereum UX, and more recently launched a $1 million subsidy to help defray the costs of audits.

The EF pointed to Clear Signing contributions from ZKnox, Sourcify, Cyfrin, Zama, WalletConnect, Fireblocks, Trezor, Keycard, MetaMask, Argot, and "independent contributors across the ecosystem." Ledger first proposed ERC-7730 in 2024.

On Monday, the EF announced a major shakeup to its core Protocol team, with three high-profile Ethereum contributors Barnabé Monnot, Tim Beiko, and Alex Stokes stepping down as leaders of the cluster. Will Corcoran, Kev Wedderburn, and Fredrik were named as Protocol co-leads.