Ethereum’s recently introduced smart wallet feature, EIP-7702, is under scrutiny after blockchain security researchers uncovered cybercriminals’ misuse of it. Following the Pectra upgrade, several wallet providers have begun integrating EIP-7702 features.
Analysts at Wintermute, a crypto trading firm, noted that attackers used 97% of EIP-7702 wallet delegations to deploy contracts designed to drain funds from unsuspecting users.
Hackers Use Ethereum’s EIP-7702 to Automate Mass Wallet Drainings
EIP-7702 temporarily allows externally owned accounts (EOAs) to operate as smart contract wallets. The upgrade enables features like transaction batching, spending limits, passkey integration, and wallet recovery—all without changing wallet addresses.
Instead of moving ETH manually from each compromised wallet, attackers now authorize contracts that automatically forward any received ETH to their own addresses.
“No doubt attackers are one of the early adopters of new capabilities. 7702 was never meant to be a silver bullet and it does have great use cases,” Rahul Rumalla, Chief Product Officer at Safe, said.
Wintermute’s analysis shows that most of these wallet delegations point to identical codebases designed to “sweep” ETH from compromised wallets.
These sweepers automatically transfer any incoming funds to attacker-controlled addresses. Out of nearly 190,000 delegated contracts examined, more than 105,000 were linked to illicit activity.
Koffi, a senior data analyst at Base Network, explained that over a million wallets interacted with suspicious contracts last weekend.
He clarified that attackers didn’t use EIP-7702 to hack the wallets but to streamline theft from wallets with already exposed private keys
In case it wasn’t clear:
These wallets were not hacked using 7702. The hacker obtained the private keys without doing anything related to 7702.
And, since they have the keys, they could transfer money out of these wallets by making regular transactions from each one.…
The analyst furthered that one standout implementation includes a receive function that triggers ETH transfers the moment funds land in the wallet, eliminating the need for manual withdrawal.
“The new mechanism EIP-7702 is used most by coin stealing groups (not phishing groups) to automatically transfer funds from wallet addresses with leaked private keys/mnemonics,” he stated.
Despite the scale of the operation, there are no confirmed profits so far.
A researcher at Wintermute noted that attackers have spent about 2.88 ETH authorizing over 79,000 addresses. One address alone executed nearly 52,000 authorizations, yet the target address has not received any funds.
During the 2025 edition of the Paris Blockchain Week, BeInCrypto sat down with Alexis Yellow, CEO of Yellow, a crypto project working on an entirely new paradigm based on Satoshi’s initial vision for Bitcoin.
He talks about the upcoming Yellow Tokens, a new smart contract mechanism, and making crypto projects more utility-driven.
Alexis, can you introduce yourself?
I’m Alexis, a software engineer by background. I worked at the European Space Center early in my career, but my crypto journey started quite unexpectedly.
Back in 2013, an old friend from school reached out—he was working at Goldman Sachs and told me about a project that needed help. He said, “There are 12 people in Silicon Valley printing fake money.” That project turned out to be Ripple.
Ripple ended up being our first client, and that experience really helped me grasp the potential of crypto.
Despite the skepticism surrounding the space, I saw real innovation. Ripple’s CTO was a Bitcoin Core contributor, and Vitalik Buterin was involved with the team before Ethereum.
Actually, Buterin was planning to join Ripple. He was especially excited about their consensus mechanism, which inspired me, too.
One thing that always stuck with me was Satoshi’s idea: We need systems where trust isn’t a prerequisite. That idea shaped a lot of my thinking.
Around 2018–2019, I decided to start Yellow. We later merged with a French exchange technology company called OpenWare. Combining my market experience with their tech, we launched Yellow Network.
So, it’s a trading infrastructure designed to let institutions, like Société Générale, trade directly with major players like Binance without needing to trust them.
Trading with exchanges like Binance without trusting them, do you mean trust as a counterparty?
Exactly that’s at the core of Satoshi’s vision. At Yellow, we’re working on a different model of trustlessness using state channels, which represent a new paradigm compared to traditional blockchain systems like Bitcoin or Ethereum.
In those systems, you have tens of thousands of nodes, say, around 30,000, validating each transaction. It’s a powerful model for security, each validator has a financial incentive to be honest, and there’s no way to roll back a confirmed transaction.
The same applies to staking networks. But that structure just doesn’t work for high-frequency trading. You can’t have 30,000 nodes verifying every microsecond trade. It’s simply too slow and inefficient.
For example, some networks try to solve this by reducing the number of validators to 21, but that compromises the level of trust and decentralization. Our approach is fundamentally different. The Lightning Network inspires it, but we’ve taken it in a new direction.
With the Lightning Network, you can move money instantly by opening a state channel. At Yellow Network, we use similar state channels but instead of transferring funds directly, we transfer profit and loss in real time.
For instance, if you buy a Bitcoin for $100,000 and it rises 5%, the $5,000 profit is immediately transferred to your wallet. The trade is settled instantly, peer-to-peer, with cryptographic proof.
To ensure security and fairness, we’ve built a smart contract called ClearSync. If a counterparty refuses to settle, as we saw with the HyperLiquid issue recently, ClearSync can step in and arbitrate the trade.
It verifies the claim and, if valid, ensures the rightful party receives what they’re owed. So, it’s a trustless system that still allows for the speed and flexibility traders need.
1/ $JELLYJELLY on @HyperliquidX and what happens when we rely on trust.
No, it’s peer-to-peer trading. Nothing is faster or more efficient than a direct state channel between two parties. Profit is transferred instantly. That’s the core of this new paradigm: trustless trading, where settlement happens in real time.
Let’s say we’re trading and the connection drops, no problem. If I made a profit, it’s already secured. I might not receive the asset, like Bitcoin, but my profit in dollars is locked in. There’s no need to trust the other party to settle correctly.
Is it effective profit or a claim to profit?
It’s effective profit, denominated in dollars or whatever currency is locked as collateral. Here’s how it works – two parties lock in $20,000 to trade Bitcoin. That amount represents the maximum they’re willing to risk.
If the trade results in a $5,000 profit for one side, that amount is instantly settled, even if the other party refuses to finalize the trade.
If both agree to settle, I send you $100,000, you send me one Bitcoin, and both our collaterals unlock.
Can you switch to stablecoin?
Absolutely. In fact, we’re working with stablecoin issuers to create partnerships and potential investments in Yellow.
Can you give us an idea of the size of the Yellow Group? How many people are there? How many transactions do you process ?
We haven’t officially launched. Before the war in Ukraine, we had a large team of over 100 people. Many have since relocated, mostly to Poland, but we still have staff in Ukraine. Right now, we’re about 50 people globally.
Meanwhile, you can track activity on our analytics site, BundleBear. On Polygon, we’re already the fourth most active app. On Linea, a new protocol by Consensys, we’re number one with over 229,000 users despite not being live yet.
We can see on your website that you are offering your technology so that you can list any token without going through a CEX or a DEX. Is that part of the project?
Exactly. The Yellow Wallet is like a Layer 3; it lets users interact with any chain seamlessly. It now supports cross-chain swaps, like moving tokens from Polygon to Binance Smart Chain, with zero fees. It’s designed to remove friction from cross-chain trading.
Seamless cross-chain swaps, all in your Yellow Wallet!
Swap between BNB, Base, Arbitrum, AVAX, Polygon, OP, Linea, and Scroll with ease.
No, not for the state channels themselves. We don’t monetize trades directly. The Yellow token plays a security role, a “necessary evil,” like ETH or BTC.
Your security deposit gets burned if you behave badly and refuse to settle. It ensures honesty in a peer-to-peer environment. Think of it like a miner losing their reward for trying to cheat.
How do you make money from the usage of your service?
The token economy is the foundation. Just like ETH or BTC derive value from usage and network participation, the Yellow token does too.
It’s needed to place security deposits in the network, and over time, its utility and adoption by industry players will drive its value.
If someone cheats, their token gets burned—creating deflationary pressure and reinforcing good behavior.
Is the token already traded?
Not yet, but we’re planning to launch in the next couple of months. We’ll mint 10 billion Yellow tokens; ideally, that number stays close to that.
If too many tokens get burned, it could indicate issues in the system. It’s a built-in signal to monitor the health and integrity of the network.
Are you going to start it with an airdrop or something of the sort?
No, we’re focused on utility-based distribution. Most tokens will be sold directly in the markets where they’re used. Ethereum didn’t launch with an airdrop. Neither did Bitcoin.
This is a B2B infrastructure project—just like Ethereum and Ripple. While the network is open to everyone, our core users are businesses and institutional players.
That said, the beauty of crypto is that the ecosystem is open. Anyone who believes in the project can get involved and benefit from the network effect, without needing to be a developer or an insider.
Anything important that we left out?
Yes, very few cryptocurrencies are used in the real world today. Bitcoin has proven its value as a store of wealth.
Ethereum demonstrated its utility during the ICO boom. USDT fills a vital gap in places where dollars are hard to access.
We believe Yellow can become the fourth pillar. It’s solving a real need in crypto markets: scalable, trustless, high-frequency trading. And we’re making it open source so the whole industry can benefit.
It’s obvious that Web3 applications will need infrastructure to reach the scale of platforms like Twitter or YouTube.
At Pragma today, @Yellow‘s Louis Bellet shared the secret weapon Ethereum already has to achieve this today.
I think this approach, state channels for speed and smart contracts for resolution, will redefine how trading infrastructure works. It’s ideal for gaming and other fast-paced applications where blockchains never truly fit.
Blockchain isn’t always the answer, especially if you’re using 30,000 nodes to validate a game move. That’s just not efficient.
With Yellow, the trading side is handled through cryptographic state channels not full decentralization. But if something goes wrong, we still fall back to a smart contract to arbitrate. That’s the balance we’re bringing.
Also, we’re working on a new ERC standard for this. In the next 3–4 years, I expect that 10–20% of new crypto projects will adopt this architecture.
Overall, We’re not just building a product, we’re introducing a new philosophy for how decentralized systems can operate more efficiently.
Immutable X (IMX) has shown positive momentum in the past month, pushing the altcoin to a critical juncture in its price action. Currently trading at $0.72, IMX is attempting to break past a long-standing resistance level.
However, it faces challenges as a significant portion of the token’s supply, about 117 million IMX worth over $84 million, remains unprofitable and could potentially cause further price resistance.
Immutable Investors Await Profits
About 117 million IMX tokens, valued at over $84 million, are currently awaiting profitability, sitting between the price range of $0.81 and $0.84. This sizable supply zone has created a resistance level that Immutable X has struggled to breach for the past three months.
As a result, the chances of selling at this point are high, with many holders likely to liquidate their positions as the price approaches this zone.
This selling pressure could prevent IMX from sustaining upward movement unless stronger support from long-term holders and new buyers emerges. The resistance at this price range could also lead to the formation of price consolidation.
Looking at the broader market momentum, IMX is showing positive signs. The Chaikin Money Flow (CMF) has recently breached above the zero line for the first time since the beginning of 2025.
This indicates that IMX is experiencing its strongest inflows of the year, which could help maintain the altcoin’s rally.
Meanwhile, the surge in inflows could help push IMX past its current resistance levels, especially if market sentiment remains favorable. The positive movement in the CMF suggests that the rally is backed by strong demand, which could fuel further price increases.
With sustained capital inflows, IMX may find the necessary support to break through the $0.81 barrier and continue its upward momentum.
IMX has gained 37% over the past week, trading at $0.72 at the time of writing. Holding above the $0.72 support level, the altcoin faces the critical resistance zone of $0.81, which it has been unable to breach since mid-February. If IMX can break this resistance, it could signal the start of a new upward movement.
However, the significant supply zone between $0.81 and $0.84 poses a risk of continued price consolidation under $0.81.
If the resistance proves too strong, IMX could fall through the $0.72 support level and drop to $0.60. This would invalidate the bullish thesis, suggesting a potential reversal in market sentiment.
On the other hand, if investor sentiment remains bullish and the broader market cues continue to support the rally, IMX could breach the $0.81 resistance.
A successful push past $0.88 would make the 117 million IMX tokens profitable, reinforcing the altcoin’s growth potential. This would invalidate the bearish outlook and likely spur further positive momentum.
1/ $JELLYJELLY on 
