Key Insights
- Ethereum address poisoning activity has increased since the Fusaka upgrade.
- The low transaction fees on Ethereum since the upgrade have allowed the industrialization of address poisoning.
- Low success rate of address poisoning continues to drive a high volume of dust transfers by attackers.
A new report from Etherscan has identified the industrialization of address poisoning on Ethereum, attributing it to the Fusaka upgrade. According to the report, the rate of address poisoning on the network has soared since the upgrade.
The report comes amidst numerous complaints by Ethereum users about multiple attacks. One user, Nima, noted that she got more than 89 Address Watch Alert emails after making two stablecoin transfers.
The Rate of Address Poisoning Attack Soared After Fusaka
A 2025 study cited by Etherscan reported 17 million address poisoning attempts on Ethereum between July 2022 and June 2024. These attacks targeted 1.3 million users directly. Through the attempts, users lost $79.3 million on Ethereum.
Interestingly, BNB Smart Chain (BSC) saw more address poisoning activity during that period, with 252.7 million attempts. Lower transaction fees drove this. However, Ethereum now has significantly more attempts since the Fusaka upgrade.
The upgrade, introduced in December 2025, improved Ethereum’s scalability, substantially reducing transaction fees. While this was a positive development by itself, it has also enabled address poisoning activity to happen at scale.
Within three months of the upgrade, Ethereum’s daily transactions increased 30% on average compared to the three months before the upgrade. The number of new addresses created daily also jumped by 78%.
However, not all these were organic activity as it also coincided with an increase in the dust transfer activity. Dust transfer is an address poisoning tactic in which attackers send a small amount of the sand token a user has just transferred, usually around $0.01 for stablecoins or 0.00001 ETH.
The data shows that dust transfers for USDT increased from 4.2 million to 29.9 million. For Ethereum, it went from 169.7 million to 104.5 million. USDC also saw an increase from 14.9 million to 2.6 million while DAI soared to 811,029 from 142,405.
This meant that all the stablecoins saw dust transfers increase by 470% to 612%. At the same time, ETH also increased by 62%. Interestingly, other transfers above $0.01 did not increase.
The report noted:
Users Advised on Tips to Prevent Address Poisoning
Meanwhile, the report noted that industrialization of address poisoning is unlikely to stop, given its low success rate. Only 1 in 10,000 address-poisoning transfers result in users mistakenly sending funds to the attacker.
This means attackers usually send millions of transfers in the hope of getting a chance at one big break. In one instance, a user lost $50 million to an address poisoning scam.
To counter rising address poisoning attempts, the Etherscan report urged users to double-check wallet addresses before copying them. This simple precaution helps reduce the risk of falling victim to fraudulent transactions.
It stated:
Users are advised to add private name tags on Etherscan for addresses they interact with often. They can also rely on domain names like ENS to make transactions safer and easier to verify.
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