According to Coin Metrics, stablecoin-related dust activity now accounts for an estimated 11% of all Ethereum transactions and 26% of energetic addresses on a median day after the Fusaka upgrade made transactions cheaper.
“Dusting” attacks are a type of address poisoning by which attackers send tiny crypto transfers from similar wallet addresses to trick users into copying the flawed address.
Ethereum now sees greater than 2 million average day by day transactions, rising to almost 2.9 million in mid-January, together with 1.4 million day by day energetic addresses – a 60% increase over previous averages.
The Fusaka upgrade in December made the network cheaper and easier to make use of by improving on-chain data processing and reducing the price of publishing information from Layer 2 networks back to Ethereum.
Digging through the dust of Ethereum
Coin Metrics said it analyzed over 227 million balance updates for USDC (USDC) and USDt (USDT) on Ethereum from November 2025 to January 2026.
It found that 43% involved transfers of lower than $1 and 38% involved transfers of lower than a cent — “amounts with insignificant economic purpose aside from wallet seeding.”
“The variety of addresses with small ‘dust’ balances greater than zero but lower than one native unit has increased sharply, consistent with tens of millions of wallets receiving tiny toxic deposits.”
Before Fusaka, stablecoin dust accounted for about 3% to five% of Ethereum transactions and 15% to twenty% of energetic addresses, it said.
“After Fusaka, these numbers increased to 10-15% of transactions and 25-35% of energetic addresses on a typical day, a rise of two to thrice.”
However, the remaining 57% of balance updates involved transfers above $1, “suggesting that nearly all of stablecoin activity stays organic,” Coin Metrics explained.
After Fusaka, the typical Ethereum transaction size dropped sharply. Source: Coin Metrics
Users must be wary of address poisoning
In January, security researcher Andrey Sergeenkov pointed to a 170 percent increase in latest wallet addresses within the week starting January 12 and likewise suggested that this was linked to a wave of address poisoning attacks benefiting from low gas fees.
In these “dusting” attacks, malicious actors typically send fractions of a cent value of stablecoins from wallet addresses that resemble legitimate ones, tricking users into copying the flawed address when making a transaction.
Sergeenkov said $740,000 had already been lost fighting poisoning attacks. According to Coin Metrics, the highest attacker sent almost 3 million Dust transfers for just $5,175 in stablecoin costs.
Dust doesn’t represent real economic use
Coin Metrics reported that around 250,000 to 350,000 day by day Ethereum addresses are involved in stablecoin dusting activity, but a lot of the network growth has been real.
“Most of the post-Fusaka growth reflects actual usage, although dust activity is an element value noting when interpreting the headline metrics.” Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph's editorial guidelines and goals to supply accurate and up-to-date information. Readers are advised to independently confirm the knowledge. Read our editorial policies https://cointelegraph.com/editorial-policy
