Stablecoin dust transactions surge on Ethereum

Stablecoin-related “dust” transfers on Ethereum have more than tripled since the Fusaka upgrade, now accounting for roughly 11% of transactions and 26% of active addresses, according to Coin Metrics.

The increase follows Fusaka’s December rollout, which lowered transaction costs by improving onchain data handling and made it cheaper to post data from layer-2 networks back to Ethereum.

Coin Metrics analysed more than 227 million balance updates involving USD Coin and Tether on Ethereum between November 2025 and January 2026.

It found that 43% of those updates involved transfers under $1, with 38% below a single cent, amounts the firm said have “insignificant economic purpose other than wallet seeding.”

“Post-Fusaka, these figures jumped to 10–15% of transactions and 25–35% of active addresses on a typical day,”

Coin Metrics said, describing a two-to-three-fold increase compared with pre-upgrade levels.

The rise is linked to address poisoning attacks, where attackers send tiny look-alike transfers to trick users into copying the wrong wallet address, a tactic that security researchers say has already cost users about $740,000.

Coin Metrics stressed that most activity remains legitimate, noting that 57% of stablecoin balance updates were above $1 and that “the majority of post-Fusaka growth reflects genuine usage.”

At the time of reporting, Ethereum price was $2,272.77.