Almost half of all Ethereum Improvement Proposal 7702 (EIP-7702) authorizations by users involve crimes like phishing and draining of funds, according to research from market maker Wintermute.
This is a far cry from Vitalik Buterin’s claim that its temporary smart contract functionality would give users “superpowers” with “guardrails.”
Since May 7 this year, users have activated the feature 1,580,930 times, with Wintermute’s team tagging 768,275 or 48% of them as crime-related.
Criminals might — subject to further investigation — have victimized thousands of people using this feature.
EIP-7702 temporarily converts a user’s signing account into a smart contract wallet for the duration of that transaction. It was supposed to enhance user experience and security without permanently altering account structures.
Buterin also boasted about benefits like transaction bundling, gas sponsorship, and other cost savings. He claimed EIP-7702 would enable “broad adoption of user experience improvements across applications.”
Numerous EIP reviewers approved of its implementation.
EIP-7702 went live on Ethereum mainnet earlier this year and Protos warned users on May 7 to be careful about signing messages using its new feature.
Sadly, every warning in that article has come true.
Read more: A single malicious transaction led to $230M drained from WazirX
On average, 6,285 transactions use EIP-7702 per day — about 0.37% of total ETH transactions.
By May 30, Wintermute was warning that 97% of all EIP-7702 delegations were automatically draining or sweeping incoming ETH from victimized addresses.
The “crime” tag in Wintermute’s research refers to delegate contracts that auto-sweep funds from externally owned accounts.
