RWA issuers could force transfers on hidden balances under Ethereum’s ERC-8424 draft
- ERC-8424, a draft Ethereum standard filed Friday, would give RWA issuers a forced-transfer power over encrypted balances.
- OpenZeppelin developer Aryeh Greenberg opened the pull request as an extension of ERC-7984.
- A forum reviewer warned that two of its functions could leak a hidden balance in at most 64 calls.
A draft Ethereum standard called ERC-8424 went up for review on Friday. Issuers of tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) would be able to force-transfer assets that still have encrypted amounts.
The pull request was published by Aryeh Greenberg, an OpenZeppelin developer who posts as arr00 in the ethereum/ERCs repository.
ERC-8424 adds two public checks and three private functions to ERC-7984
An Ethereum standard named ERC-7984 already exists for private tokens that store amounts as encrypted pointers. ERC-8424 builds on that standard.
The draft also has two plaintext eligibility checks, a confidential check to see if a certain transfer is allowed, a confidential number showing how much of a balance can be spent, and a forced transfer that only authorized parties can use.
When figuring out the amount that can be spent, issuer freezes, lockups, vesting schedules, and pledged amounts must be taken into account. The draft puts limits on minting, burning, stopping, and freezing, but it doesn’t say how they should be put into action.
There are rules about who can transfer money and how much can be sent. “An issuer may be required to move assets without a holder’s consent,” the draft also says.
In the draft, it is written that ERC-3643 and ERC-7943 for tokens with public balances already take care of these tasks.
A reviewer warns of a 64-call path to an encrypted amount held by a holder
A forum participant named zexoverz found a hole in the draft on the Ethereum Magicians thread on Friday morning.
The transfer check and the spendable-balance function don’t limit who can call them, so anyone can look into someone else’s account.
zexoverz said that a binary search can find a 64-bit encrypted balance in at most 64 calls, but only if the person calling can also decrypt the answer.
zexoverz said the spendable-balance function would reveal the balance in a single call.
zexoverz pointed out that OpenZeppelin’s current ERC7984Freezable code only lets the account holder see their own figure. He asked that the same rule be added to the spec.
Vesting and balance caps depend on the amount, so a failed transfer there leaks exactly what the draft’s “Disclosure through reverts” section warns about, without decrypting anything, zexoverz explained.
ERC-8424 is still a draft and needs one more review from an Ethereum editor, either g11tech, jochem-brouwer, samwilsn or xinbenlv.
abcoathup assigned the draft its number, 8424, on Friday and renamed the forum thread to match.
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FAQs
What is ERC-8424?
A draft Ethereum standard extending ERC-7984 for confidential real-world-asset tokens, with an access-restricted forced transfer.
Who proposed ERC-8424 and when?
Aryeh Greenberg, posting as arr00, opened the pull request on September 25, 2026.
What security concern have reviewers raised?
Two functions have no caller restriction, so a hidden balance could leak in at most 64 queries.
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Randa Moses
Randa Moses is an editor and reporter at Cryptopolitan covering tech, AI, robotics, crypto, scams, and hacks. She has worked in the crypto space since 2017. She held roles at Forward Protocol, AmaZix, and Cryptosomniac. Randa holds a degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from the University of Bradford.
