How to revoke token approvals (delegates) on Solana
Short answer: A delegate is an address you approved to spend some of a token account’s balance. Revoke removes the approval. SolRent lists every account with an active delegate and revokes them in batches.
Steps
- Scan your wallet. Accounts with an active delegate appear under “Risky approvals”.
- Review the delegate. You see which address can spend and how much.
- Revoke. Sign the Revoke instructions — no SOL is moved and the fee is zero for revoke-only batches.
Why approvals are risky
Some apps ask for a token approval instead of a direct transfer. If that app — or a malicious site pretending to be it — keeps the approval, it can move up to the approved amount later without asking again.
What revoking does
The Revoke instruction clears the delegate on a token account. Your tokens stay where they are. SolRent charges no fee for revoke-only transactions; you only pay the network fee.
How delegate approvals work
Every SPL token account can name one delegate, an address allowed to transfer up to a set amount of that account's tokens without asking the owner again. The Approve instruction sets the delegate and the amount; each transfer the delegate makes reduces what is left. The approval stays until it is used up, replaced by a new approval, or revoked.
Apps use approvals for things like limit orders, subscriptions and some marketplaces. The risk is an approval you no longer need: if the app is compromised, or you approved a fake site, the delegate can still move tokens later.
Signs you should check your approvals
- You connected your wallet to a site you no longer trust, or one later reported as a scam.
- You used a trading bot, order book or marketplace that you have stopped using.
- Tokens moved out of your wallet without a transaction you remember signing.
If tokens are already moving without your approval, revoke immediately, then move remaining funds to a new wallet. If you ever entered your seed phrase on a website, revoking is not enough, because the attacker controls the wallet itself.
What revoking does and doesn't do
- It clears the delegate and the approved amount on that token account.
- It doesn't move or touch your tokens.
- It doesn't undo transfers that already happened.
- It costs only the normal network fee. SolRent charges nothing for revoke-only transactions.
Revoking without SolRent
With the SPL Token CLI, spl-token revoke <account> clears the delegate on one account. Some wallets show approvals in their security settings. SolRent's scan lists every account with an active delegate in one place, with who the delegate is and how much they can move.