The Ethereum Foundation launches the Clear Signing open standard to promote the readability of transaction signatures

The Ethereum Foundation officially launched the Clear Signing open standard on Tuesday, aimed at replacing the unreadable hexadecimal strings displayed when wallet users sign transactions with human-readable transaction content.

This standard is centered around ERC-7730. When a wallet supports this standard, it will read the descriptor file of the contract and reconstruct the raw transaction data into understandable content, such as displaying a Uniswap V3 swap as sending 1,000 USDC and receiving at least 0.42 WETH. ERC-8176 adds an integrity certification layer on top of this, allowing auditors to publish signature certification confirming the accuracy of the descriptors. Participants include hardware wallets (Ledger, Trezor), software wallets (MetaMask, WalletConnect), security companies (Cyfrin), and infrastructure (Fireblocks), among others.

Blind signing has been a significant cause of losses in crypto assets. The $1.5 billion vulnerability at Bybit in February 2025 and the approximately $235 million WazirX incident both involved signers approving transactions that did not reflect the true intent. Ledger initiated this project in 2021, formalized it as ERC-7730 in 2024, and transferred governance to the foundation earlier this year to ensure the neutrality of the standard. The ERC-7730 V2, released in April 2026, has expanded its coverage to cross-chain use cases, software wallets, and confidential token primitives.