The Ethereum community has unveiled Clear Signing, a security upgrade designed to make transaction details readable before users approve them, replacing raw hexadecimal data that has long made blind signing a persistent risk. The initiative is intended to give self-custody wallet users a clearer view of what they are authorizing and to reduce the chances of approving malicious transactions without realizing it.
Blind signing has been identified as a major weakness in crypto security, particularly as attackers continue to exploit opaque signing flows to drain funds from wallets and protocols. The Ethereum Foundation said approving a transaction should serve as the final safeguard over digital assets, but that role is undermined when users cannot understand what they are signing. The foundation pointed to major losses across the industry, including the $1.4 billion Bybit hack last year, as evidence of the scale of the problem.
Clear Signing is being integrated into a range of wallets and infrastructure providers, including Ledger, Trezor, MetaMask, Keycard, WalletConnect, Argot and Fireblocks. The feature is built around the idea of “what you see is what you sign,” with human-readable transaction descriptions replacing unreadable code and a descriptor registry designed to present data in a consistent format across platforms.
The system also includes an attestation framework, allowing auditors to verify that the displayed descriptors are accurate. Supporters say this should make it harder for attackers to disguise harmful smart contract interactions as ordinary transfers or approvals.
The rollout comes as crypto platforms face increasingly sophisticated attacks despite broader gains in security practices. North Korean state-backed groups have stolen more than $7 billion in funds since 2009, much of it from crypto-related targets. Trezor’s chief technology officer said the absence of a broadly adopted, user-friendly standard has made it easier for attackers to trick users into signing transactions that can empty wallets. Trezor plans to implement the standard before June 30.The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has stepped in to support Kalshi in its legal dispute with Ohio, urging the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to affirm that the federal regulator has authority over prediction markets.
In an amicus brief filed on Tuesday, the agency argued that Ohio exceeded its powers when state officials ordered Kalshi last year to halt sports event contracts in the state, describing those products as unlicensed sports gambling. Kalshi responded by suing Ohio authorities in October, seeking to block the Ohio Casino Control Commission and the state attorney general from taking enforcement action. A federal district court denied that request in March, prompting Kalshi’s appeal.
CFTC Chairman Mike Selig said the district court adopted too narrow a view of the commission’s jurisdiction and that the appeals court should correct the ruling. He also said the agency would not permit state governments to weaken what he described as its longstanding authority over these markets.
The case is one of several testing whether states can limit federally regulated prediction markets. The outcome could affect major platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket, both of which have faced scrutiny over sports-related event contracts.
This is the CFTC’s second public intervention in support of a prediction market operator in recent months. In February, it filed a similar brief in the Ninth Circuit backing Crypto.com in a dispute with Nevada regulators. The agency has also sued five states — Wisconsin, New York, Arizona, Connecticut and Illinois — in an effort to defend its jurisdiction.
In its latest filing, the CFTC warned that state intervention could create regulatory instability. The agency said event contracts traded on designated contract markets fall within its exclusive oversight when they are structured as swaps or binary options. It added that if states are allowed to block sports-related contracts, the broader federal regime governing other event contracts could also be undermined.
