The Scam Sniffer report shows that address poisoning attacks have caused significant losses recently. In January 2024, a victim lost $12.2 million, and in December 2023, similar attacks resulted in a loss of $50 million. In January 2024, signature phishing attacks stole $6.27 million, affecting 4,741 people, a month-on-month increase of 207%, with two wallets accounting for 65% of the total losses. Web3 Antivirus points out that address poisoning is a common method for large losses, and the trend is not diminishing. Analysis indicates that the Ethereum Fusaka upgrade has lowered transaction costs, fueling dust attacks; stablecoin dust transactions account for 11% of Ethereum transactions and 26% of active addresses. Coin Metrics data shows that between November 2025 and January 2026, stablecoin balances were updated over 227 million times, with 38% of balances below 1 cent, suspected of dust poisoning behavior.
What exactly is address poisoning attack? Let's take a look.
Address poisoning attack is a common blockchain scam, simply put, scammers 'pollute' your wallet transaction history, causing you to mistakenly select the wrong address when transferring funds to bad actors.
Attackers first study your wallet's commonly used addresses, then generate a fake address that looks very similar (for example, differing by just a few characters), then send a very small "dust transaction" (e.g., $0.0001) to your wallet. This small amount embeds the fake address into your transaction history. Next time you hurriedly copy an address, you might easily pick this "poison address" from your history, and as a result, a large sum of funds could be lost—blockchain transfers are irreversible and cannot be retrieved.
Think about it: you often send money to your friend's address "0xabc123...", and a scammer sends you $0.001 from "0xabc124..." (almost identical). When you copy it, you might get confused, and $100,000 is gone. This is the trick behind the $12.2 million loss in January.
What losses are reported in the news?
Address poisoning: $12.2 million in a single transaction in January, and last December there was a $50 million major case. Scammers specifically target large accounts.
Signature phishing: $6.27 million stolen in January, with 4,741 victims, a month-on-month increase of 207%. Two wallets accounted for 65% of the losses.
Dust attack is on the rise: After the Ethereum Fusaka upgrade, Gas fees decreased, and stablecoin dust transactions accounted for 11% of the entire network, with 26% of active addresses being 'polluted.' From November 2025 to January this year, 38% of over 227 million balance updates were below 1 cent—essentially all were dust poisoning.
Why is it happening more frequently now?
Low Gas fees have drastically reduced the cost for scammers to spread "dust," with stablecoins (USDT/USDC) becoming the main battlefield. Web3 Antivirus says this is still the number one killer of large losses, and the trend hasn't been stopped.
How to prevent it?
Manually enter addresses for each transaction, do not copy from history.
Use a hardware wallet or multi-signature, and enable the address book feature.
Seeing unfamiliar small income, directly ignore or burn it (transfer to your new address).
Tools like Scam Sniffer can provide real-time alerts.
