How to check and revoke ERC-20 token approvals and allowances
Every wallet that has interacted with ERC-20 tokens likely holds active approvals. An approval is a permission you gave a data/verify-contract-owner-and-proxy/">smart contract to spend a specific token on your behalf. Most users grant them without a second thought, and the default is often "unlimited" - a maximum possible value. That approval lasts until you revoke it.
The danger is straightforward. If the contract holding your approval gets exploited, or if it turns out to be malicious, the attacker can drain the approved tokens from your wallet. You do not need to sign another transaction. The approval is already there.
Two free tools let you see every active approval on your address: Etherscan's Token Approvals page and Revoke.cash. Both read on-chain data directly. Neither asks for your private key. You connect your wallet or paste an address, and they show you a list.
Using Etherscan to check approvals
Go to Etherscan. Paste your wallet address into the search bar. On your address page, find the "Token Approvals" tab - it is usually under the "More" dropdown - and click it.
Etherscan displays a table. Each row shows a token, a contract you approved, and the remaining allowance. An allowance that reads a very large number, like 115792089237316195423570985008687907853269984665640564039457584007913129639935, is an unlimited approval. That number is the maximum possible value in the ERC-20 standard. It means the contract can spend every token of that type in your wallet, now and in the future.
You can filter by token symbol. You can sort by allowance size. Etherscan shows approvals for both the current network you are viewing and for any connected wallet across multiple chains.
Using Revoke.cash for a more detailed view
Revoke.cash works on the same principle but covers more networks. It scans Ethereum, BNB Chain, Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, and others. You connect your wallet to the site. It reads all approvals from the chain and groups them by token.
Revoke.cash also distinguishes between ERC-20 approvals and NFT approvals (ERC-721 and ERC-1155). It marks unlimited approvals clearly. Each entry shows the contract name, the spender address, and the exact allowance.
The interface lets you revoke individual approvals or clear all of them at once. Every revoke action costs gas.
How to revoke an approval
Revoking is a transaction. You call a function on the approved token contract that sets the allowance back to zero. The exact function name varies, but most ERC-20 tokens use approve(spender, 0).
Etherscan and Revoke.cash both build this transaction for you. You click the revoke button, your wallet opens a confirmation window, you see the gas fee, and you sign and broadcast.
The gas cost for a revoke is similar to a standard token transfer. On Ethereum mainnet during normal conditions, expect roughly 40,000 to 60,000 gas units. At a gas price of 30 gwei, that is about 0.0012 to 0.0018 ETH. On Layer 2 networks like Arbitrum or Optimism, the cost is much lower - often under a dollar.
You can batch revokes. Some tools let you revoke multiple approvals in one transaction, saving on total gas. Revoke.cash offers this for certain token standards.
Why you should check regularly
Approvals do not expire. A contract you approved in 2021 is still active today unless you revoked it. That old approval on a DeFi protocol you no longer use is still a valid permission.
Check approvals every few months. Do it after you use a new dApp. Do it if you suspect a contract was compromised. The check takes two minutes. The cost to revoke is small. The cost of leaving an unlimited approval open to a hacked contract can be your entire token balance.
What to revoke first
Prioritize unlimited approvals on contracts you no longer interact with. Prioritize approvals on obscure tokens or contracts with low liquidity. Prioritize approvals on contracts that have changed ownership or been abandoned.
You can leave approvals active on protocols you trust and use daily. That is a risk decision, not a technical one. The technical option is to revoke and re-approve only when needed.
The on-chain data as of August 31, 2026 shows no deployed contract for basiliskawakens.xyz on any major network. That means no token, no pair, and therefore no approvals to check or revoke for this project. The tools described above work for any Ethereum-compatible wallet regardless.
If you hold tokens, check your approvals today. If you find one you do not need, revoke it. That is the only way to close the door.
Not financial advice. basiliskawakens.xyz publishes market data and general information about digital assets. Crypto assets are volatile and you can lose everything you put in. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell or hold, and we make no price predictions.
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