Allowances persist forever unless you change them. How to list what you have granted, decide what to remove, and do it without falling for a fake revoker.
PersistenceAllowances last until explicitly changed — there is no expiry
ScopePer token, per spender, per chain
CostOne gas-paying transaction per revocation
FBT Swap
What you should know
Every token approval you have ever granted is still active unless you explicitly changed it. Contracts you used once in 2022 may still be authorised to move your entire balance of a token today.
Reviewing them is the highest-value hour of security work available to most wallets, and it is free apart from gas.
Listing what you have granted
Allowances live on the token contract, so they are public. Block explorers for each network expose a token-approval view for an address, and dedicated revocation tools read the same data.
Check every chain you have used. Approvals are per-chain, so a clean list on Ethereum says nothing about BNB Chain or Polygon.
Deciding what to remove
Remove anything unlimited on a token with a meaningful balance unless you use that contract regularly. Remove everything belonging to a protocol you no longer use. Remove everything granted to a contract you cannot identify.
Keeping a small number of allowances to long-lived, widely used routers is a reasonable trade. Keeping forty is not a trade, it is an inventory nobody is tracking.
Revoking safely
A revocation sets the allowance to zero and is an ordinary on-chain transaction, so it costs gas on each chain. Batch it while gas is low rather than doing one at a time.
Critically: fake revocation sites exist precisely because this is advice people follow. A page that asks you to connect and then requests an approval rather than a zeroing transaction is the attack wearing the costume of the defence.
Making it a habit
Review after any period of heavy experimentation, after using any site you are unsure about, and on a fixed schedule — quarterly is enough for most people. Before a large balance arrives in a wallet is another good moment.
FBT Swap requests approvals only for the token being swapped and only for the aggregator router executing it. The spender address is visible in your wallet prompt every time, which is the moment to notice anything unexpected.
Step by step
How it works
01
Pick a chain
Approvals are per-network. Work through each chain your address has used.
02
Open the approvals view
Use the block explorer for that chain, or a revocation tool you reached by typing the address yourself.
03
Identify the spenders
Match each spender contract to a protocol you recognise. Anything unidentifiable is a candidate for removal.
04
Revoke the unnecessary ones
Set the allowance to zero. Each revocation is a transaction and costs gas on that chain.
05
Re-check the result
Reload the approvals view and confirm the allowance now reads zero before moving on.
At a glance
At a glance
01
Persistence
Allowances last until explicitly changed — there is no expiry
02
Scope
Per token, per spender, per chain
03
Cost
One gas-paying transaction per revocation
04
Main trap
Fake revocation sites that request an approval instead
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Clear answers before you decide.
Does revoking move my tokens?+
No. It only sets a spender's allowance to zero on the token contract. Your balance is untouched and the tokens never move.
Is there a free way to revoke?+
No, because it is a state change on-chain and therefore a transaction with a network fee. Doing it on a low-fee chain or during a quiet window is the only saving available.
Will I have to re-approve later?+
Yes, if you use that protocol again. That is the intended trade: a small recurring cost in exchange for not leaving standing permissions open indefinitely.
Risk notice
Crypto assets are volatile and on-chain transactions cannot be reversed. You can lose money, including all of it. Nothing here is financial advice.
