How to revoke token approvals and permissions

The Importance of Revoking Token Approvals

If you’re a big (or small) crypto user, you might accumulate quite a list of token approvals. And if you don’t revoke them, the approvals will remain valid indefinitely. There have been multiple instances in the past where established projects were hacked, and if you haven’t revoked the approval, you could remain vulnerable even years after your last interaction with the project.

Additionally, the crypto world is filled with scams and phishing attempts, and it’s easy to accidentally sign malicious approvals on phishing websites. Typically, when this happens, scammers will deplete your tokens shortly after you sign the approval. However, if you revoke it in time, you can prevent this from happening. Even if you don’t stop the scammers in time, you should still revoke the approval as it could be used again in the future.

Using Revoke.cash to Revoke Token Approvals

Revoke.cash is the largest and most popular tool for revoking token approvals. It works with all major wallets and supports over 100 different networks.

To revoke token approvals, you can either enter your wallet address (or ENS name/other alias) in the search bar or connect your wallet, as shown in (1) in the image. From there, you can select the network for which you want to revoke approvals (2).

After loading, you will see a list of all token approvals you’ve granted on that network. You can sort the list (3), apply filters (4), or search by the spender address of the approval (5). If you suspect you’ve signed a malicious approval, it’s recommended to sort by “latest to oldest,” so you can see the most recent approvals first.

After applying these options, you can find the approval you want to revoke and click the “Revoke” button (7). Alternatively, you can click the pencil icon next to the approval amount (6) to update the approval to a different amount. This might be useful if you want to reduce risk but still require the approval in the future.

Using Etherscan to Revoke Token Approvals

Another commonly used tool to revoke token approvals is Etherscan and other block explorers like Polygonscan. While it’s not as user-friendly as Revoke.cash, it’s still a good option if you’re already familiar with blockchain explorers and don’t want to use other tools.

To revoke token approvals on Etherscan, you must navigate to the token approvals page, which can be accessed through the “More” menu in the top navigation bar. On this page, you can enter your wallet address, as shown in (1) in the image. Then, you can select the token type to check for approvals (ERC20, ERC721, ERC1155) (2).

After loading, you will see a list of all token approvals for the selected token type. Be sure to toggle the “Show all approvals” switch (3) to ensure you see all approvals. Finally, you can find the approval you want to revoke and click the “Revoke” button (4).

If you want to revoke token approvals on other chains (such as BNB Chain or Polygon), you can use the same process, but you’ll need to navigate to the appropriate block explorer for that chain, such as BscScan or Polygonscan.