Vitalik’s simple multisig check brings back “walk-away testing” and puts vulnerable Ethereum wallet UX in the spotlight $ETH ETFs deepen flows and increase the cost of poor design.
summary
- Vitalik Buterin uses Etherscan’s “read contract” to inspect multisig from a mobile phone without using the Safe app, calling it a quiet victory for open, walk-away compliant infrastructure.
- While he acknowledges that pasting secrets into URLs is risky, he warns that this pattern “eventually has to be broken” for reasons such as privacy, floating display keys, and client-side block explorer integration.
- Experimental tools like swissknifoxyz and Microchain’s zk signer come in the spotlight $ETH ETFs are drawing in sustained flows, tightening supply, and pricing in wallet vulnerabilities as risks.
Ethereum’s co-founder is reopening an old wound in the cryptocurrency with the help of a commonplace multisig check. Most wallets still fail basic usability and “walk-away tests.”
This morning I needed to check which addresses are multisig signers.
I was using my phone and didn’t have the Safe app installed on it.
I realized that I could search for my address on etherscan and use the “read contract” feature to get what I wanted directly.
These… pic.twitter.com/UVEbU8DtTg
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) January 28, 2026
What Vitalik actually did
“This morning, I needed to check which addresses are multisig signers,” wrote Vitalik Buterin, adding, “I was using my phone and didn’t have the Safe app installed on it.” Instead of reinstalling Safe, “I realized I could search for my address in etherscan and use the ‘Read Contract’ feature to get what I needed directly.”
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He called this workaround a modest but important win for open infrastructure, saying, “If your wallet or application is open source and passes walk-away testing, you get additional UX benefits like these.” In other words, even though the front end is gone, users still need to access core functionality through neutral tools such as block explorers.
“Walk-away tests” and privacy limits
Buterin warned that this same workflow “will eventually have to be discontinued for privacy reasons.” The direction he suggested is that the “browsing key…is an extended version of the address that also includes additional personal information,” and that block explorers read that information on the client side via the URL hash field. He acknowledges the trade-off: “It’s dangerous to encourage people to paste all sorts of secrets into URLs and web pages. Ultimately, we need to be able to do more things directly through our wallets.”
Developers quickly came up with an alternative. One response pointed to the open source tool swissknifxyz as “another open source alternative,” while Microchain Labs highlighted a “microchain zk signer” that replaces explicit multisig signatures with zk authentication certificates and stores only the state root on-chain. These experiments are now placed in a different context with the emergence of the US spot. $ETH In ETFs, structural trends are beginning to reshape the way Ethereum is traded. In the early weeks of trading $ETH ETF inflows concentrate liquidity at the front of the curve, mirroring a pattern previously associated with Bitcoin products.
Market background and $ETH ETF link
This parabolic move comes as digital assets continue to trade as the purest expression of macro risk appetite. Bitcoin ($BTC) has a trading volume of approximately $32.8 billion, with a 24-hour high of $90,476 and low of $87,549, hovering around $88,235. Ethereum ($ETH) was trading near $2,953, with 24-hour volume of approximately $23.4 billion, and spot market prices on major exchanges earlier this week were concentrated in the $4,500 to $4,600 range. Solana (SOL) is trading around $192 and is highly liquid across top venues.
As ETF flows deepen, analysts warn that ETF liquidity will persist. $ETH Demand for ETFs could absorb a significant portion of circulating supply, while issuers race to increase their size. $ETH ETF assets rapidly progressed toward the $1 billion level during the launch phase. The throughline is simple and unforgiving. If a product, be it a wallet or an ETF wrapper, fails a walk-away test, the market will eventually price in that vulnerability.
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