Etherscan: Ethereum Fusaka upgrade leads to a surge in poisoning attacks as transaction costs decrease.

According to Etherscan research, address poisoning attacks on the Ethereum network have shown a significant upward trend recently. Attackers send transactions with forged addresses, inserting wallet addresses with characters highly similar to the real addresses into users' transaction records, thus inducing users to mistakenly copy the wrong addresses in subsequent transfers. Research shows that between July 2022 and June 2024, approximately 17 million address poisoning attempts occurred on the Ethereum network, targeting approximately 1.3 million user addresses, with confirmed losses of at least $79.3 million. The attacks are typically carried out through zero-amount transfers, fake token transfers, or dust transfers, and are automatically initiated within minutes of a user completing a real transaction. Although the success rate of a single attack is only about 0.01% (approximately 1 in 10,000), attackers use automated systems to send poisoned transactions on a large scale, thereby gaining profits through sheer numbers. The research also found that different attack groups often compete for the same target address, attempting to be the first to write the forged address into the transaction history. Furthermore, the Fusaka upgrade, activated on December 3, 2025, reduced Ethereum transaction costs, enabling attackers to send large numbers of poisoned transactions at a lower cost. In the 90 days following the upgrade, Ethereum's average daily transaction volume increased by approximately 30% compared to the previous 90 days, and the number of new addresses added daily also increased by approximately 78%, while small dust transfers increased significantly. Etherscan reminds users to carefully verify the target address before transferring funds. This can be done by using address tags, ENS domains, wallet address books, or address highlighting features to distinguish legitimate addresses and reduce the risk of accidental transfers. Because blockchain transactions are irreversible, once funds are sent to the wrong address, they are usually difficult to recover.