Crypto glossary

Revoke

To revoke means to cancel a token approval you gave a smart contract, setting its allowance to zero so it can no longer move those tokens out of your wallet.

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What revoking actually does

When you use a decentralized app, you often approve it to spend a token on your behalf. That approval, called an allowance, stays on the blockchain until it is used up or changed. Revoking is simply sending a new approval transaction for the same contract with an amount of zero.

Because it changes on-chain state, a revoke is a real transaction. You pay a network fee and must sign it with the wallet that granted the approval. For NFTs, the equivalent is turning off setApprovalForAll for a marketplace or contract.

How people do it

Block explorers such as Etherscan have a token approval checker, and dedicated tools like Revoke.cash list every allowance a wallet has granted across many chains. Some wallets show approvals directly. You connect or paste your address, see which contracts can spend which tokens, and revoke the ones you no longer need.

Make sure you are on the genuine site. Fake revoke tools are a known phishing trick: they ask you to sign something that grants a new approval instead of removing one.

When it helps

Revoking is good hygiene for approvals to apps you stopped using, unlimited approvals you granted long ago, and contracts later reported as exploited. It reduces how much an attacker could take if one of those contracts is ever compromised.

What it cannot do

A revoke only prevents future transfers. Tokens already taken cannot be pulled back. And if your seed phrase or private key has been stolen, revoking is pointless: the attacker controls the wallet itself and can simply send everything. In that case the only fix is moving remaining funds to a fresh wallet with a new seed phrase, ideally before the attacker acts.

Revoking also does not cover signatures that were already used, and it costs gas each time, so on expensive networks people often prioritize unlimited approvals on large balances.

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Frequently asked questions

Does revoking cost money?

Yes, it is an on-chain transaction, so you pay a normal network fee. On layer-2 networks this is usually small.

Should I revoke after every trade?

Not necessarily. Many people revoke approvals for apps they no longer use and unlimited approvals on wallets holding meaningful amounts.

Can revoking get my stolen tokens back?

No. It only stops a contract from taking more. Transfers that already happened are final on the blockchain.

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All glossary terms · Educational reference only — not investment, legal, tax or financial advice.