Following the implementation of technical improvements to the network, the Ethereum Fusaka upgrade has caused an unexpected spike in “dust” transaction traffic. According to a recent report from Coin Metrics, the volume of these minuscule cryptocurrency operations has tripled, currently accounting for eleven percent of all daily activity on the leading smart contract platform.
This phenomenon, detected after analyzing more than 227 million balance updates, reveals that forty-three percent of transfers involving USDC and USDT are for amounts under one dollar. However, this uptick does not necessarily reflect real economic use, as it is directly linked to malicious tactics that exploit the low gas fees achieved following the December hard fork.
The rise of address poisoning and inorganic network traffic
The reduction in operational costs, stemming from better on-chain data management, has made it easier for attackers to send millions of insignificant deposits to active wallets on a massive scale. This technique, known as “address poisoning,” aims to trick users into copying fraudulent addresses from their recent transaction history, an error that has already caused estimated losses of seven hundred and forty thousand dollars.
On the other hand, the analysis firm highlights that, prior to the execution of the Ethereum Fusaka upgrade, these junk operations only accounted for five percent of the total. However, in the current scenario, the figure has jumped to fifteen percent, forcing investors to take extreme precautions by verifying every character of their recipients to prevent the theft of digital funds.
Furthermore, data shows that the number of daily active addresses increased by sixty percent, reaching an average of 1.4 million active wallets. Despite this apparent growth, analysts warn that one-quarter of these addresses are involved in dust activity, distorting the genuine adoption metrics that investors typically use to evaluate the health of the broader ecosystem.
Is network growth a sign of genuine or artificial adoption?
Given this exponential increase, doubts arise as to whether network efficiency is attracting real users or simply opening the door to further technical manipulation. While fifty-seven percent of transfers exceed one dollar, the growth of wallets with tiny balances suggests a saturation of attacks seeking to compromise the privacy and security of cryptocurrency holders.
Nevertheless, industry experts point out that the Ethereum Fusaka upgrade has met its primary goal of scaling second-layer solutions effectively. Therefore, although “dust” is an unintended side effect, most post-upgrade activity remains organic, driven by a reduction of up to sixty percent in transaction costs for startups and decentralized finance protocols.
In conclusion, the outlook for the asset suggests an adaptation phase where user vigilance will be crucial against attack strategies that become more profitable with cheap gas. It is expected that, in the coming months, wallet providers will implement advanced filters to mitigate this digital noise, allowing Fusaka’s scalability to translate into real benefits without the risks of address poisoning.
