A delegation is not an approval, and the gap between those two words is where this study lands.

Researchers have examined EIP-7702 — the Pectra-era feature, live on Ethereum mainnet since 7 May 2025, that lets an ordinary externally owned account temporarily run smart-contract code while keeping its address — across the seven chains that support it. In the paper Revealing the Dark Side of Smart Accounts, presented at the 35th USENIX Security Symposium, the authors report that over 63% of EIP-7702 authorisation transactions are associated with malicious attacks on those accounts, that they confirmed 924 malicious contract accounts, and that nearly half of the most-authorised contracts are attacker-controlled.

Scale figures come from reporting on the paper rather than the abstract: more than 22.8 billion transactions swept, 3,664,166 authorisations isolated, data running to 15 July 2025, and roughly $2.36 million in confirmed losses, as reported by The Cryptonomist.

What you are actually signing

An approval lets one contract spend one token from your address, up to a cap. A delegation points your address at contract code that can act with the account’s full authority — same address, new powers, no per-token ceiling. The legitimate uses are real: batching actions into a single transaction, letting a third party cover gas, the smart-account experience the upgrade was written to enable. What people pointed their accounts at is the finding, not the feature.

Which explains the framings. “Wallet upgrade”, “security enhancement”, “claim your refund” — a delegation prompt dressed as maintenance is the cheapest route to a signature, because the word upgrade does not sound like the phrase hand over the account. None of this indicates a defect in any particular wallet; the finding is about what users authorised through one.

The check, before and after

Before signing anything described as an upgrade, establish which contract address it would point to, and whether your software recognises that address. Afterwards, find out whether your address carries a delegation at all, and revoke what you did not intend — several block explorers surface this now. We will not name a tool; satisfy yourself about whatever you reach for.

And the standing briefing, because control of the account is the subject. No upgrade, refund or migration has ever needed your recovery phrase. Not typed into a page, not photographed, not read aloud to support, not parked in a cloud note. The same instinct governs the approvals hygiene in our MetaMask review: read what a prompt grants before it gets what it wants.

Crypto assets carry high risk, and one signature can hand that risk to a stranger — so do your own homework on any contract before you delegate an account to it.