Is Ethereum’s activity growth fake? Behind the 3.86mln poisoned wallets
Ethereum [ETH] simply posted a few of its busiest community metrics on file, however all that glitters isn’t gold. In line with safety researcher Andrey Sergeenkov, a lot of this exercise is attributable to a large-scale tackle poisoning assault!
What it’s best to know
Supply: sergeenkov.com
On the floor, the info is spectacular.
New Ethereum addresses went 2.7x above the 2025 common.
Peak was across the twelfth of January, with 2.7 million new addresses; 170% improve over regular ranges. On the similar time, weekly transactions went up 63%, going from 10.5 million to a file 17.1 million.
Supply: sergeenkov.com
However when Sergeenkov dug deeper, he reported that round 80% of this development was pushed by stablecoins, primarily USDT and USDC.
What’s attention-grabbing is that stablecoins are sometimes utilized in automated exercise. So, on this case, the numbers have been unusually skewed.
Supply: sergeenkov.com
first-time stablecoin transactions, the sample grew to become clear. 67% of recent addresses acquired lower than $1 as their very first switch. In whole, 3.86 million out of 5.78 million addresses acquired these tiny “mud” funds.
That is apparent tackle poisoning.
However what’s that?
Attackers ship tiny quantities of tokens to wallets utilizing addresses that intently resemble a sufferer’s actual one. When customers later copy an tackle from their transaction historical past with out checking it fastidiously, they find yourself sending funds to the attacker.
Supply: sergeenkov.com
Sergeenkov recognized the principle culprits by monitoring USDT and USDC transfers below $1 between the fifteenth of December and 18th of January 2026. He filtered for senders that distributed mud to at the least 10,000 distinctive addresses, and uncovered a number of large-scale operators.
The highest three contracts alone despatched mud to greater than 1.6 million addresses. One distributed mud to 690,000 wallets, one other to 589,000, and a 3rd to 405,000.
How Fusaka modified issues
Tackle poisoning wasn’t all the time well worth the effort. The success charge is extraordinarily low (about 0.01%) so attackers depend upon a couple of huge errors to make cash. On this case, one sufferer alone misplaced $509,000, making up a lot of the funds stolen to date.
That modified in December.
Ethereum’s Fusaka improve reduce common ERC-20 switch charges by practically 6x, making it low cost to ship thousands and thousands of spam transactions.
Nearly in a single day, large-scale poisoning grew to become worthwhile.
New contracts have appeared in current days, with one already sending mud to 78,000 addresses. All main attacker contracts are lively, and the most important losses typically occur towards the tip.
Remaining Ideas
- Ethereum’s file development is being inflated by tackle poisoning.
- The Fusaka improve reduce charges 6×, making it a worthwhile assault.
