Ethereum Breaks Activity Records: Analysis of 10 Suffixes on the Network Reveals Massive Spam Campaign

The unstoppable growth of transactions on Ethereum over the past few days has grabbed headlines for hitting all-time highs, but the deep waters of the network tell a less flattering story. According to recent research, much of that increase might not reflect genuine user demand, but rather a coordinated operation that takes advantage of current economic conditions to launch industrial-scale address poisoning attacks.

Analysis of 10 crypto suffixes and transaction patterns reveals that roughly 80% of the unusual growth in new Ethereum addresses is tied to small stablecoin transfers, enabled by the drastically reduced fees that came following the technical upgrades in December. This finding adds complexity to the optimistic narrative surrounding the network’s record volume.

The Silent Danger: How Address Poisoning Attacks Work

In recent days, the network processed nearly 2.9 million transactions in 24 hours—an all-time high—while average costs remained at recent lows. Under normal circumstances, this combination would have led to speculation about ETH supply pressure and increased demand for block space. However, the price behavior tells a completely different story.

Ether is trading around $2,810 in the most recent sessions, posting a 6.25% drop over the past 24 hours—a decline that contrasts sharply with the excitement that a record of activity should generate. According to onchain researcher Andrey Sergeenkov, the explanation lies in a sophisticated address poisoning campaign that has flooded the network with low-value transactions.

How exactly does this attack work? Scammers generate wallet addresses that closely mimic legitimate ones, then send micro-transfers of stablecoin “dust”—often less than $1—to potential victims. When these transfers appear in a wallet’s transaction history, they enter fraudulent addresses mixed with real address prefixes and suffixes, creating visual confusion.

The attack thrives when subsequent users copy these addresses without checking each character thoroughly, inadvertently sending real funds to the attacker’s similar address. What starts out as a seemingly harmless dust transaction turns into a psychological mechanism of deception, transforming user trust into a vector of vulnerability.

Tracking the noise: 80% evidence linked to micro stablecoin transfers

Sergeenkov’s analysis delves into blockchain data to reveal the true magnitude of this operation. Of the 80% unusual growth in new addresses, almost all are directly connected to stablecoins like USDT and USDC. Examining the first interactions of these newly activated addresses, he found that approximately 67% received less than $1 in their initial transfer—a pattern that reflects not organic adoption, but rather massive, automated distribution.

In hard numbers, roughly 3.86 million of the 5.78 million addresses analyzed received what it classifies as “contaminating dust” on their first contact with stablecoins. The true scope of the operation emerges when you trace the source: specialized smart contracts that sent minuscule amounts of stablecoins to hundreds of thousands of wallets, using features designed to fund large batches of tainted addresses into unique transactions.

This technical infrastructure reveals the industrial nature of the campaign. These are not isolated operations, but distribution machines optimized to maximize the number of contaminated addresses with as few transactions as possible. Once scattered throughout the network, these addresses inflate activity counts while creating the perfect conditions for copy-paste errors that subsequently lead to tangible losses for unsuspecting users.

Low fees as an economic catalyst for spam

The critical question that emerges is: why now? Sergeenkov notes that the scale of this operation has become possible thanks to drastically lower transaction fees since early December, when the Fusaka upgrade went into effect. These reduced costs transformed what would otherwise be a strategy with a low probability of success—dependent on isolated human error—into an economically viable enterprise.

With near-zero transaction fees, sending dust to millions of wallets becomes a low-risk investment with significant return potential. Even if 99% of potential victims become aware of the deception, the remaining 1% could mean thousands of successful transactions and considerable profits.

This reality complicates the interpretation of Ethereum’s record. Low fees and smooth workflow demonstrate technical resilience, yes. But they also dramatically made it cheaper to run spam at scale. If a substantial portion of the activity is machine-generated noise, then the record volume says less about genuine demand for block space, adoption of decentralized applications, or stronger Ethereum fundamentals.

Split markets: cryptocurrencies, gold, and stocks in mixed territory

Beyond Ethereum, global markets are navigating uncertain territory. Bitcoin is trading around $84,640, registering a 5.39% drop in the last 24 hours, although it maintains a gain of 0.38% in the last hour. Over the past seven days, the leading cryptocurrency has given up roughly 4.73%, reflecting broader pressures in risk markets.

Gold, meanwhile, has hit record highs near $4,675 in early Asian trading, buoyed by Trump’s threat of tariffs on eight European nations over disputes related to Greenland. This trade escalation stoked fears of a full-blown trade war, directing funds into safe-haven assets. Wall Street analysts on average forecast that gold will reach $5,180 in 2026, implying an approximate gain of 19.3% from the close of 2025.

Japan’s Nikkei, by contrast, showed weakness, falling around 0.7% while 40-year government bond yields hit new highs. Asia-Pacific markets traded cautiously during a session marked by renewed tariff tensions between the U.S. and the EU, as well as growing political uncertainty ahead of a possible snap election in Japan.

Beyond 10 suffixes: Vitalik’s insights, NFTs, and market movements

In other developments in the crypto ecosystem, Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, has reaffirmed his call for “different and better DAOs,” underscoring the need for evolution in decentralized governance structures. At the same time, analysts of the NFT market dispute exaggerated reports about the death of the sector.

Yat Siu of Animoca Brands argues that wealthy crypto collectors continue to drive the digital asset market. Pudgy Penguins emerges as one of the strongest NFT brands in this cycle, transitioning from speculative “digital luxury goods” to an omnichannel IP platform. The strategy includes user acquisition through mainstream channels—toys, retail partnerships, viral content—followed by Web3 onboarding through games, NFTs, and the PENEGU token.

The ecosystem already encompasses phygital products (retail sales over $13 million and over 1 million units sold), gaming experiences (Pudgy Party surpassed 500k downloads in two weeks), and a widely distributed token (airdrop to over 6 million wallets). While the market currently values Pudgy at a premium to traditional IP pairs, sustained success depends on execution in retail expansion, gaming adoption, and increased token utility.

Market volatility has led to additional turbulence: Bitcoin’s drop towards the $84,000 zone triggered more than $650 million in liquidations across the crypto market. While gold and stocks bounced from their lowest levels of the session, cryptocurrencies remain at the lows of the day, raising questions about how much further they could fall.

A funding gauge suggests a temporary bottom could be coming, although analysts say a genuine bullish turn may not materialize until the Federal Reserve adopts a significantly more accommodative monetary policy. For now, the analysis of 10 transaction suffixes on Ethereum has exposed an inconvenient truth: not all activity growth reflects fundamental health. In an environment where operational costs plummet, the distinction between genuine adoption and machine-generated noise becomes critical to correctly interpreting what is actually happening on blockchains.