What is EIP-7702? The Ethereum Upgrade Behind the $6.4B Binance Hack

In brief

• EIP-7702 is an Ethereum upgrade, activated in May 2025, that lets standard wallets temporarily take on the abilities of smart contracts.
• It enables batched transactions, gas sponsorship and limited-permission keys, but delegated code gets full access to the wallet's funds.
• An attacker used EIP-7702 in October 2026 to drain a Binance hot wallet during a $6.4 billion hack that analysts attributed to North Korea.

Ethereum has two kinds of accounts. Externally owned accounts (EOAs), the standard wallets most people use, are controlled by a private key and can do little more than send transactions. Smart contract accounts can run code, enabling features like spending limits, account recovery and paying fees in tokens other than ETH, but most users never moved to them.

EIP-7702 is an attempt to bridge that gap. Instead of asking users to migrate to new wallets, it lets existing EOAs borrow the code of a smart contract while keeping their address and funds.

This guide explains what EIP-7702 is, how it works, why developers wanted it, and how attackers used it in the largest crypto theft on record.

What is EIP-7702?

EIP-7702, titled "Set Code for EOAs," is an Ethereum Improvement Proposal written in May 2024 by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and developers Sam Wilson, Ansgar Dietrichs and lightclient, according to the official specification.