MATEX: A Multi-Agent Framework for Explaining Ethereum Transactions

Abstract: Understanding a complicated Ethereum transaction remains challenging: multi-hop token flows, nested contract calls, and opaque execution paths routinely lead users to blind signing. Based on interviews with everyday users, developers, and auditors, we identify the need for faithful, step-wise explanations grounded in both on-chain evidence and real-world protocol semantics. To meet this need, we introduce (matex, a cognitive multi-agent framework that models transaction understanding as a collaborative investigation-combining rapid hypothesis generation, dynamic off-chain knowledge retrieval, evidence-aware synthesis, and adversarial validation to produce faithful explanations.