Why are those old Web3 permissions still lurking in your crypto wallet?
Much like that gym membership you haven’t used since January, Web3 permissions often stick around long after you’ve stopped interacting with a platform.
These digital handshakes—token approvals that grant smart contracts rights to your assets—don’t expire automatically, creating a persistent backdoor to your digital wealth.
Think of these permissions as spare keys you’ve handed out to various services.
You might have given Uniswap, OpenSea, or countless other DApps the equivalent of a master key to your token collection.
Left unchecked, these approvals create vulnerability highways straight to your assets.
The stakes are surprisingly high.
Active approvals on tokens (whether ERC-20, ERC-721, or ERC-1155) allow approved contracts to transfer or manage those assets indefinitely.
It’s like giving your neighbor permission to borrow your car, then forgetting you did so—until one day, the car’s mysteriously gone.
Fortunately, specialized tools make permission cleanup relatively straightforward.
Services like Etherscan’s Token Approval Checker and Revoke.cash offer user-friendly interfaces to view and revoke unwanted approvals.
Simply connect your wallet, review the list of contracts with access to your assets, and select which permissions to terminate.
Remember that each blockchain operates independently.
Permissions granted on Ethereum won’t appear when checking Polygon or Solana networks.
Users must manage approvals separately on each chain using network-specific tools like Polygonscan or Famous Fox Federation’s Revoker for Solana.
Revoking permissions does require signing an on-chain transaction, which incurs a gas fee.
Consider this expense the cost of digital hygiene—a small price for greatly enhanced security.
Regular permission audits should become routine maintenance for any crypto wallet holder, similar to how you should perform monthly updates to your wallet software to maintain security against vulnerabilities.
Simply disconnecting your wallet from a dApp does not revoke any approvals and leaves your assets vulnerable to potential exploits.
When interacting with dApps, you should avoid setting unlimited spend limits in wallets like MetaMask to further reduce potential risks.
