Recent surges in network activity on Ethereum may correlate with a series of address poisoning attacks that exploit lower gas fees available since December, according to security researcher Andrey Sergeenkov.

Reports have indicated that Ethereum’s network activity has doubled, with retention seeing nearly 8 million addresses in a month and daily transactions approaching an all-time high of nearly 2.9 million. The week beginning January 12 saw 2.7 million new addresses, a 170% increase over typical numbers, while daily transactions soared past 2.5 million, stated Sergeenkov.

However, Sergeenkov indicates that this surge may be influenced by a type of mass spam attack, referred to as “address poisoning,” which has become more feasible following the Fusaka Ethereum network upgrade in December that reduced transaction costs significantly.

To give a sense of the economic impact, network fees plunged by more than 60% in the weeks after the upgrade.

“Address poisoning has become disproportionately appealing for attackers,” he noted, adding, “You can’t scale infrastructure without prioritizing user security!”

$740,000 Lost in Address Poisoning Attacks

Address poisoning involves scammers sending minuscule transactions from wallet addresses resembling genuine ones, tricking users into using the wrong address for transactions. The scammers initiate the scheme by sending small amounts of money, usually in stablecoins, to addresses chosen for their deceptive similarity to real user addresses.

From the analysis, when determining potential “dust distributor” addresses—outreach accounts sending transactions to over 10,000 unique addresses—Sergeenkov found that over $740,000 was stolen from 116 victims by this method.

Top contract addresses distributing dust to bait addresses. Source: Andrey Sergeenkov

${Study Related: }Efforts to bulletproof Ethereum are paying off in user metrics. 👈