A peer-reviewed study presented at USENIX Security 2026 found that 63% of the 3.66 million EIP-7702 authorization transactions observed across seven chains through July 15, 2025 originated from attacker-linked contracts. This feature, activated as part of the Pectra upgrade on May 7, 2025, allows a regular wallet to become programmable via a pointer to deployed code, granting that code the ability to act with the account’s authority. Researchers identified 924 malicious contracts responsible for $2.36 million in realized losses and estimated $10.14 million in potential exposure from legacy contracts whose defenses relied on the assumption that EOAs could not be programmable. The study emphasizes that wallets must treat delegation as the installation of an account’s control plane and maintain durable authorization records.
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