Ethereum Whales Lose $62M to Address Poisoning as ‘Fusaka’ Upgrade Cuts Spam Costs
Scam Sniffer reports $62M lost to address poisoning in two months, with analysts blaming the ‘Fusaka’ upgrade for making wallet spam economically viable.
Two cryptocurrency investors have lost over $62 million in combined assets since December after falling victim to "address poisoning," a tactic now operating at industrial scale following Ethereum’s recent network upgrades. According to a new report from Scam Sniffer, the attacks exploit a specific user habit, copying wallet addresses from transaction history, rather than protocol vulnerabilities.
The $62 Million Receipt
The most recent incident occurred in late January, when a single whale wallet lost 4,556 ETH (approximately $12.25 million) after inadvertently sending funds to a look-alike address. This follows a massive $50 million USDT loss in December, where a trader copied a compromised address from their history that matched the first and last characters of their intended recipient.
Market analysts are pointing to Ethereum’s Fusaka upgrade (deployed late 2025) as a key accelerant. By significantly reducing gas fees for small data packets, Fusaka inadvertently made it economically viable for attackers to spam millions of "dust" transactions. Security firm Coin Metrics estimates that stablecoin-related dust now accounts for nearly 11% of all Ethereum daily transactions.
"Address poisoning is one of the most consistent ways large amounts of crypto get lost… Recent incidents show this trend isn’t slowing down," noted Web3 Antivirus in a related advisory.
The Mechanics of the Trap
Address poisoning relies on "vanity address" generators. Attackers monitor active high-value wallets, generate an address that mimics the target’s frequent counterparties (matching the first 4-6 and last 4-6 characters), and send a zero-value or token "dust" transaction. When the victim goes to make their next transfer, they copy the poisoned address from their history instead of the legitimate one.
While Ethereum (ETH) traded flat at $2,123 (-1.4%) following the report, the data highlights a shift in threat vectors. Protocol hacks are declining relative to user-side interface attacks. Scam Sniffer also noted a parallel surge in signature phishing, which drained another $6.2 million from 4,741 victims in January alone. A 207% month-over-month increase.
