Since December, two victims have lost $62 million to settle the poisoning.
One victim alone lost $12.2 million in January to an “address poisoning attack” by copying the wrong address from their transaction history, adding to a similar $50 million attack in December, Scam Sniffer said.
Address poisoning occurs when attackers send small transactions or “dust” from addresses that look similar to the target's transaction history, and the victim copies the wrong address.
Scam Sniffer added that signature phishing has also increased recently, with $6.27 million stolen from 4,741 victims in January, a 207 percent increase from December.
Two wallets accounted for 65 percent of all signature phishing losses.
Signature phishing is slightly different as it tricks users into signing malicious blockchain transactions, such as unlimited token validation.
The trend of address poisoning is not slowing down.
“Address poisoning is one of the most consistent ways large amounts of crypto are lost,” anti-virus security firm Web3 reported Thursday.
Among the top address poisoning losses they tracked over time ranged from $4 million to $126 million. “Recent events show that this trend is not slowing down.
Related: Stablecoin ‘Dust' txs on Ethereum Triple Post-Fusaka: Coin Metrics
Address probes “generate full addresses where the first and last few characters you look at are the same, but the middle is different, so it looks ‘the same,'” the researchers said.
Dust attacks on Ethereum are on the rise.
Analysts speculate that Ethereum's Fusaka update in December contributed to the rise in attacks by making the network cheaper 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 an average day, Coin Metrics reported earlier in February.
The firm analyzed more than 227 million transactions on Ethereum between November 2025 and January 2026 and found that 38 percent were less than one penny – “with millions of wallets receiving tiny amounts of poison,” it said.
Blockchain intelligence firm Whitestream reported on Sunday that the decentralized DAI stablecoin has “earned a reputation as the preferred stablecoin for illegal actors, serving as a ‘parking lot' for ill-gotten gains.”
Referring to recent address poisoning attacks, he said, “This is due to protocol management not cooperating with authorities by freezing DI wallets.”
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