How to Revoke a Token Approval After a Crypto Airdrop

Finishing an airdrop claim doesn't remove the permission you gave the claim contract. If the transaction granted an allowance, that contract can keep moving that token until you reduce or revoke it. Here's how to find the exact approval your claim created and switch it off.

Find the approval, not only the website connection

Disconnecting the site in your wallet only stops the website talking to your wallet; the allowance stays on-chain. To see it, open your claim transaction in the network's block explorer and look for an Approve or SetApprovalForAll call, or paste your address into an approval checker such as Etherscan's Token Approval Checker or Revoke.cash. Both list every token allowance and the spender it belongs to.

Confirm the network and spender

Approvals are network-specific. Match the token contract and spender address with the claim transaction so you do not revoke the wrong permission or overlook another network.

Check for permits and Permit2 as well

Some claims never send a visible approval transaction. Instead they ask you to sign a permit, a gasless message that grants an allowance. And if you've ever approved Uniswap's Permit2 contract, individual sites get allowances inside Permit2 rather than on the token itself. Look for Permit2 entries in your approval checker and revoke the site's entry there too; if your checker doesn't list Permit2 allowances, use one that does.

Submit the revocation

Set the allowance to zero or use the revocation action provided by the checker. The wallet will show a transaction and a gas fee because the change must be recorded on-chain.

Weigh the gas against what's at risk

Revoking is an on-chain transaction, so it costs gas on that network. On layer-2 networks and BNB Smart Chain that's usually a few cents; on Ethereum mainnet it can be more. If the approved token is worthless and nothing else of value sits in the wallet, moving your other assets to a fresh wallet may be the simpler fix. If the wallet holds anything you care about, revoke.

Verify that the transaction succeeded

Wait for confirmation and check the allowance again. A failed or pending revocation does not protect the tokens.

Know what revocation cannot fix

Revoking an allowance does not secure a wallet whose seed phrase or private key was exposed. In that case, create a new wallet and move assets as soon as safely possible.

Look for account delegations too

Since Ethereum's Pectra upgrade in May 2025, a wallet can sign an EIP-7702 authorization that lets the account run a contract's code. Drainers have abused this, because one signature can hand over far more than a single token allowance. If your wallet shows a smart-account upgrade or delegation you don't remember setting up, switch the account back to a standard one from the wallet's own settings, then move funds if anything looks wrong.

Reduce future exposure

Prefer exact or limited allowances, use a separate wallet for claims and review approvals periodically rather than leaving old contracts with access.

Sources

MetaMask's guide and Revoke.cash were checked on October 31, 2026; the EIPs are the underlying standards. MetaMask guide to revoking token approvals: https://support.metamask.io/more-web3/learn/how-to-revoke-smart-contract-allowances-token-approvals/. Etherscan Token Approval Checker: https://etherscan.io/tokenapprovalchecker. Revoke.cash approval checker: https://revoke.cash/. ERC-20 approve and allowance: https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-20. EIP-7702 account delegation: https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-7702.

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