Ethereum · CryptoSlate
Attackers drove 63% of early apply of Ethereum’s new smart wallet capability
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Ethereum's shortcut to smart wallet behavior arrived with a new trust problem: a wallet can make a regular address programmable without moving the user's assets, while the delegated code gains power to act with that account's authority.
Key facts
- Detected theft totaled about $2.36 million, so the $10.14 million represents assets exposed by a defensive assumption that no longer held
- Within that data, they examined 3,664,166 EIP-7702 authorizations through the cutoff and used transaction filters, bytecode analysis and manual review to identify 924 malicious contracts
- A peer-reviewed study released for USENIX Security '26 found that attacker-linked contracts were associated with 2,322,548 of the 3,664,166 EIP-7702 authorization transactions it observed
- Ethereum is +4.02% over the past 24 hours and currently sits at rank # 2 by market cap
Summary
01 A peer-reviewed study found attacker-linked contracts associated with 63% of 3.66 million EIP-7702 authorization transactions across seven chains. 02 Because delegated code acts with wallet authority, researchers measured $2.36 million in losses and estimated $10.14 million in legacy-contract exposure. 03 The study did not measure distinct-wallet prevalence or current attack rates, leaving wallets to vet delegation targets and monitor changes over time. A peer-reviewed study released for USENIX Security '26 found that attacker-linked contracts were associated with 2,322,548 of the 3,664,166 EIP-7702 authorization transactions it observed across seven chains through July 15, 2025.