Description

When a user pastes an address in the send flow, an auto-review useEffect is triggered to streamline the UX. If the "New address" alert modal appears and the user cancels it, then presses the "Clear" button, the pastedRecipient state was not being cleared. This caused a race condition: handleClearInput would set to to empty, which caused hasUnacknowledgedAlerts to become false (no alerts for empty addresses), while pastedRecipient and toAddressValidated still held the old address. The auto-review useEffect would then see all conditions pass and fire handleSubmitPress with an empty to value, which got cast to 0x0000...0000.

Fix:

1. Clear pastedRecipient in handleClearInput so the auto-review effect cannot re-trigger with stale state after clearing.
2. Add a defense-in-depth guard in proceedWithSubmit to reject empty recipient addresses.

Changelog

CHANGELOG entry: Fixed a bug where clearing a pasted recipient address in the send flow could trigger a transaction to the zero address

Related issues

Fixes:

Manual testing steps

Feature: Send flow clear button

  Scenario: user clears pasted address after cancelling new address alert
    Given the user is on the send recipient screen

    When user pastes a valid address using the Paste button
    And user presses the Review button
    And the "New address" alert modal appears
    And user presses Cancel on the alert modal
    And user presses the Clear button
    Then the input field is cleared
    And no transaction is submitted
    And the user remains on the recipient screen

  Scenario: user clears pasted address without triggering review first
    Given the user is on the send recipient screen

    When user pastes a valid address using the Paste button
    And user presses the Clear button before auto-review triggers
    Then the input field is cleared
    And no transaction is submitted

Screenshots/Recordings

Before

Pressing Clear after cancelling the "New address" alert triggers a transaction submission to 0x0000...0000.

After

Pressing Clear correctly resets the input without triggering any transaction submission.

Pre-merge author checklist

• I've followed MetaMask Contributor Docs and MetaMask Mobile Coding Standards.
• I've completed the PR template to the best of my ability
• I've included tests if applicable
• I've documented my code using JSDoc format if applicable
• I've applied the right labels on the PR (see labeling guidelines). Not required for external contributors.

Performance checks (if applicable)

• I've tested on Android
  • Ideally on a mid-range device; emulator is acceptable
• I've tested with a power user scenario
  • Use these power-user SRPs to import wallets with many accounts and tokens
• I've instrumented key operations with Sentry traces for production performance metrics
  • See trace() for usage and addToken for an example

For performance guidelines and tooling, see the Performance Guide.

Pre-merge reviewer checklist

• I've manually tested the PR (e.g. pull and build branch, run the app, test code being changed).
• I confirm that this PR addresses all acceptance criteria described in the ticket it closes and includes the necessary testing evidence such as recordings and or screenshots.