CZ criticises Etherscan over address poisoning spam

Former Binance chief Changpeng Zhao criticised Etherscan for displaying spam transactions linked to address poisoning scams that flood user wallets with malicious entries.

Zhao said block explorers should filter out the zero-value transfers entirely, noting that Trust Wallet already removes such transactions to protect users from copying fraudulent addresses.

“CZ goes after Etherscan for displaying spam transactions from address poisoning scams, stating block explorers should filter out the malicious transfers completely,”

Zhao said in a post on X.

The criticism followed a case where a user known as Nima received 89 address-poisoning emails in less than 30 minutes after making two stablecoin transfers on the Ethereum network.

“So many will fall victim to this,”

Nima warned after automated attacks targeted his wallet and attempted to insert lookalike addresses into his transaction history.

Developers noted that Etherscan hides zero-value transfers by default, but related explorers such as BscScan and Basescan require users to manually enable a “hide 0 amount tx” filter to remove the malicious transactions.

Address poisoning attacks exploit zero-value token transfers generated through the transferFrom function to insert spoofed wallet addresses that mimic legitimate ones, increasing the risk that users copy the wrong address when sending funds.

At the time of reporting, Ethereum price was $2,240.48.