Just one victim lost $12.2 million in January by copying an invalid address from his transaction history in an “address poisoning attack,” which Scam Sniffer said resulted in a similar $50 million attack in December.
Address poisoning occurs when attackers send tiny transactions, or “dust,” from addresses that look similar to those in the target’s transaction history, hoping that the victim will copy the wrong address.
Fraud sniffer in addition Signature phishing has also increased recently, with $6.27 million stolen from 4,741 victims in January, a 207% boost compared to December.
Two wallets accounted for 65% of all signature phishing losses.
Signature-based phishing is slightly different in that it tricks users into signing malicious blockchain transactions, such as unlimited token approval.
Solving the problem of poisoning that won’t snail-paced down
“Address poisoning is one of the most common ways to lose large amounts of cryptocurrency.” reported security company Web3 Antivirus on Thursday.
Some of the largest address poisoning losses he has tracked over time have ranged from $4 million to $126 million. “Recent incidents show that this trend is not slowing down,” they said.
Related: Stablecoin ‘dust’ on Ethereum triples after Fusaka: Coin Metrics
The researchers explained that address poisoners “generate full addresses that match the same first/last characters you see, but the middle is different, so it appears ‘identical.’
Dust attacks on Ethereum have increased
Analysts speculate that Ethereum Fusaka’s December update contributed to an increase in the number of attacks, making the network cheaper to use in terms of transaction costs.
Stablecoin-related dust activity is now estimated to account for 11% of all Ethereum transactions and 26% of active addresses on average daily, Coin Metrics reported in early February.
The company analyzed more than 227 million stablecoin wallet balance updates on Ethereum from November 2025 to January 2026 and found that 38% of them were less than one penny – “equivalent to millions of wallets receiving small poisoning deposits,” it said.
Blockchain intelligence company Whitestream reported on Sunday that the decentralized stablecoin DAI “has gained a reputation as the stablecoin of choice for illicit actors, serving as a ‘parking space’ for illicit funds.”
“This is due to protocol management not cooperating with authorities in freezing DAI wallets,” he said, referring to recent address poisoning attacks.
Warehouse: The 6 Weirdest Devices People Have Used to Mine Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies
