Ledger Passes Stewardship of Clear Signing to Ethereum Foundation

In 2023, Ledger launched Clear Signing, an open source standard preempting what would become the most widespread risk within crypto, blind signing transactions. Seeing Clear Signing evolve into a fully open framework with the Ethereum Foundation as its neutral host, is the strongest validation of a shared effort to make the industry safer – one Ledger helped initiate, and one the Working Group now carries forward together.  

Most Crypto Exploits Happen In Plain Sight 

Most major exploits in crypto happen in plain sight because the person approving the malicious transaction cannot understand what they are agreeing to.

When you sign a transaction on most wallets, you are often looking at hexadecimal, a string of characters that, even with technical expertise, is difficult to interpret with confidence. You are trusting that the app showing you the transaction is honest. That the contract has not been tampered with. That nothing has gone wrong between your screen and the chain.

Most of the time, that trust holds, but it only takes one click to drain your entire wallet.

The Bybit incident in 2025 is the clearest example of what happens when that trust is broken. A single contract change, invisible to the signer on a hardware device, contributed to the largest loss in the industry’s history. It was not the first. It will not be the last, unless the structural problem of insecure screens is addressed.

That structural problem has a name: blind signing. Approving a transaction you can’t read is the on-chain equivalent of signing a blank check with no control over the recipient or the amount.

Clear Signing was built to end that.

What We Started & Why We Made It Open

In 2023, Ledger launched Clear Signing as an open-source security initiative. The premise was simple: a transaction should be human-readable, displayed on a tamper-proof screen, before you sign it. What you see is what you sign.

We published ERC-7730 as an open standard. We built the initial registry. We contributed the early tooling. And alongside teams like WalletConnect, MetaMask and others, drove a parallel focus on transaction signing UX and security. 

The work grew into something bigger than any single contributor. 

What The Working Group Built Together

The release today is not a single project. It is four pieces of infrastructure that work together:

• An updated ERC-7730 standard – an open format for describing what a transaction actually does.
• A decentralized registry – neutrally hosted by the Ethereum Foundation, independently mirrorable by anyone.
• An attestation framework – using ERC-8176 and the Ethereum Attestation Service, so independent auditors can verify that descriptions faithfully represent transaction behavior.
• Developer libraries and SDKs – in Rust and TypeScript, so any wallet can integrate.

This is the difference between a feature and a standard. A feature lives in one product. A standard belongs to everyone.

0/ Clear signing is now live.

An open standard to end blind signing, making human-readable transactions default.

This effort brings a major UX and Security upgrade to transaction signing on Ethereum. pic.twitter.com/nIGRCBQh6G

— Ethereum Foundation (@ethereumfndn) May 12, 2026

Why A Neutral Steward Matters

A security standard is only as strong as the trust people place in it. For a registry that wallets across the ecosystem will rely on, that trust has to extend beyond any single company – including ours.

The Ethereum Foundation hosting the registry, as part of its Trillion Dollar Security Initiative, gives the standard a credibly neutral home. No single vendor controls it. Anyone can copy and self-host the registry. Anyone can contribute descriptors. Independent auditors can attest. Wallets decide which sources they trust.

This is how security infrastructure should mature. Open from the start. Stewarded by a neutral party. Strengthened by a working group, not owned by a brand.

Credit Where It’s Due

This release exists because of contributors across the ecosystem. The stewardship of the Ethereum Foundation and Working Group members such as Trezor, WalletConnect, Sourcify, Fireblocks, Cyfrin, Zama, Keycard, ZKnox, MetaMask and Argot. Independent builders whose work runs through every layer of what shipped today.

Transaction signing is the most frequent action a user takes on Ethereum, so making the process more secure represents one of the most meaningful improvements to crypto adoption. 

What This Means If You Use Ledger

Ledger Wallet, Ledger Enterprise Multisig, and Ledger Direct Access in dApps already implement Clear Signing today. Our implementation combines the open standard with our certified Secure Element and Trusted Display, the human-readable transaction is shown on a screen an attacker cannot tamper with, on a device whose security is continuously audited by Ledger Donjon and independent labs.

The Clear Signing standard is open to everyone. The most advanced implementation is through a Ledger signer – and that doesn’t change with this announcement. 

What Comes Next

This release isn’t the end of the important work to make Ethereum transactions more secure. It’s the moment the work becomes shared.

• If you build a protocol on Ethereum – provide clear descriptions of your contract interactions. The tooling is at clearsigning.org.
• If you audit smart contracts – review descriptions and attest to their accuracy.
• If you build a wallet – integrate the standard. The libraries are open.
• If you use crypto- expect, and demand, to see what you sign. On any wallet, on any chain.

Blind signing should be a thing of the past. No hidden approvals. No blank checks. What you see is what you sign.

Today, Clear Signing, the mission that Ledger has been championing since  2023 gets a lot closer to being an industry standard.

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See what you sign.

Learn more at clearsigning.org · ERC-7730 specification · Ledger Donjon