Researchers are warning of a sharp rise in address poisoning scams across Ethereum following the network’s Fusaka upgrade.
Analysis of blockchain data showed a surge in dust transactions, particularly involving stablecoins such as USDT and USDC.
Data shared by Wise Crypto indicated that USDT transfers under $0.01 increased by 612%, rising from roughly 4.2 million to nearly 29.9 million transactions.
USDC dust transfers also climbed significantly, increasing by 473% from 2.6 million to about 14.7 million transactions.
Address poisoning scams work by inserting fake wallet addresses with similar starting and ending characters into a user’s transaction history.
Attackers hope users will mistakenly copy these spoofed addresses when sending funds, particularly because many wallets display shortened address formats.
In one reported case, an address poisoning attack led to losses of about $50 million after a victim copied a fraudulent address from their transaction history.
Blockchain explorers such as Etherscan said lower transaction fees after the Fusaka upgrade have made large-scale dust attack campaigns cheaper and easier to run.