The standard was developed by the Ethereum Foundation and companies such as Ledger, Trezor and MetaMask.
Blind signing led to billions in losses, according to the Ethereum Foundation.
An open source “clear signatures” standard (clear signingin English) so that transactions on Ethereum are displayed in human language instead of unreadable technical code was presented today, May 12, by the Ethereum Foundation (EF). The development of this technology includes companies such as Ledger, Trezor, MetaMask, WalletConnect and Fireblocks.
The problem that this standard seeks to solve is the blind signature. Currently, signing a transaction on Ethereum can mean approve a garbled hexadecimal code string without knowing what is being authorized. According to the EF announcementthat practice has contributed to billions of dollars in losses to the ecosystem.
The standard introduces three components, according to the statement:
- The first is the proposal ERC-7730a specification for describing transactions in human language.
- The second is a neutral registry of descriptors (the files that translate each contract into readable text) replicable by any actor.
- The third is ERC-8176a framework for auditors to verify the integrity of those descriptors.
According to the repository of the project’s GitHub clear signatures, this standard also includes command line tools for wallets, protocols and auditors to validate, format and generate descriptors without depending on centralized infrastructure.
Work in progress, adoption TBD
The Ethereum Foundation’s announcement clarifies that the standard, while already operational, is a work in progress, with contributors expanding coverage, improving tools, and driving adoption.
Additionally, the EF defines itself as a neutral custodian of the standard. The repository details a voluntary onboarding process through code integration requests, indicating that adoption depends on each wallet and protocol separately.
Finally, the launch is part of the Ethereum Foundation’s trillion-dollar security plan, announced in May 2025, whose mission is for billions of users to feel comfortable storing more than $1,000 on the network, as reported by CriptoNoticias.
In this framework, the eradication of the blind signature was identified by the foundation as one of the most urgent problems of the ecosystemfor both individual and institutional users.