Failing to sign a transaction with eth_sign

Question

I am trying to use the eth_sign method

However i am getting the following error:

code: -32602, message: 'Invalid parameters: must provide an Ethereum address.'

My function is as follows:

const interact = async () => {
        const { ethereum } = window;
        const web3 = new Web3(ethereum);
        const contract = new web3.eth.Contract(ContractAbi, "0xc778417E063141139Fce010982780140Aa0cD5Ab");
        let userBalance = await contract.methods.balanceOf(currentAccount).call();

        let tx_builder =  contract.methods.approve("0x832B984Bf318fB50A5D2F1E1E4F43B7728e3606f", userBalance.toString());
        let encoded_tx = tx_builder.encodeABI();
        const accounts = await ethereum.request({method: "eth_accounts"});
        let tx_obj = {
          from: accounts[0],
          node : "0x0", // this is ignored by metamask
          gasLimit: "300000",
          to: "0x832B984Bf318fB50A5D2F1E1E4F43B7728e3606f",
          data: encoded_tx
        }

        const signature = await ethereum.request({ method: 'eth_sign', params: [ tx_obj, web3.utils.toChecksumAddress(accounts[0]) ] });
        console.log(signature);
      }

There seems to be very limited documentation on usage of this function and im struggling to find if its even still useable. I know the address is valid because i signed a regular utf-8 message via "personal_sign" however that method doesnt seem to work for tx objects.

Answer 1

eth_sign always takes two parameters (see https://eth.wiki/json-rpc/API#eth_sign): an address (account that signes the message and a string (a message to sign). Some ethereum provider support eth_signTransaction (see https://eth.wiki/json-rpc/API#eth_signTransaction). Otherwise you need to use eth_sendTransaction.

Note: Most wallets prevent that you can sign raw transaction data by prepending the "Ethereum Message" prefix. In the past (and even now for MetaMask) you could rlp encode the transaction and use the rlp encoded transaction as the string input.