Clear Signing

Overview

How it works and why it matters

Clear signing is the practice of presenting a meaningful, human-verifiable account of what a cryptographic signature will authorize. Instead of an opaque data string, the signer should see the recipient, amount, asset, chain, contract, permissions and expiry when applicable. The display must faithfully reflect the actual signed payload. This is especially important for token approvals, permits and smart-contract calls where the effect is not obvious from a simple ‘sign’ button.

Technical context

It addresses the risk of blind signing but still depends on trustworthy decoding, device display, contract metadata, and user review.

It should be distinguished from Offline Signing , Air-Gapped Signing , and Secure Signing .

The principal risk is that incorrect metadata, compromised parsers, truncated fields, or inattentive approval can make apparently clear information misleading.

Practical checks

Favor wallets that interpret typed structured data and contract permissions rather than displaying only hashes or hexadecimal blobs. For a permit, check spender, allowance, token, nonce, chain domain and expiration. When a display cannot explain the effect, an organizational policy should require independent code review or reject signing.

Related concepts

Offline Signing; Air-Gapped Signing; Secure Signing

Further reading

• docs.safe.global documentation