Ethereum Foundation’s Trillion Dollar Security Initiative rolls out ERC-7730 clear signing on Trezor

The ERC-7730 standard was made as a solution to a challenge that has been plaguing crypto transactions for a very long time, and over time its adoption as a standard has been gaining traction.

The standard allows wallets to decode smart contract transactions and show the actual action, tokens, amounts, and destination on the device screen instead of a raw hash

This time around, the latest to adopt the standard is Trezor, which has turned on clear signing through the standard.

The development was confirmed by Trezor and the Ethereum Foundation on X on September 8, and it extends the security effort that the Foundation first launched in May to another set of hardware devices.

Why was signing a hash the weak point?

In the past, users could not confirm that the amount they were about to approve was the correct one that had appeared on the computer screen. The example that Trezor used in its announcement was that of a user who wants to “swap 2,000 USDC for ETH.” That is the description they see on their screen; however, the data that reaches the wallet arrives as a string of hexadecimal calldata. This calldata is presented as a hash the reader could not read.

That is how crypto transactions have been done for a very long time. The act of approving that transaction also means trusting that the description on the computer, which may be compromised, matches what the transaction really did.