Ethereum Records Record Onchain Activity, but Survey Reveals Spam-Driven Spike

As Ethereum reaches historic transaction processing milestones, in-depth research analysis is unraveling the truth behind these impressive numbers: the majority of this growth does not reflect genuine user demand, but rather sophisticated wallet tampering scams. Onchain researchers have identified that approximately 80% of the increase in new addresses is linked to “dust” attacks on stablecoins, turning a potentially bullish record into a sign of parasitic activity that markets no longer appear to be buying.

The disparity between technical records and ETH’s subdued price performance raises a critical question: Is research activity on this data revealing the true health of the network, or just exposing its weaknesses? The network processed nearly 2.9 million transactions in a single day over the past week—a mark never seen before—keeping fees close to the floor and validator exit queues at zero. In previous cycles, this combination would have triggered narratives of accelerated growth and capacity constraints. This time, the markets remain skeptical, with Ether trading near $2,840, accumulating losses of 5.57% in the last 24 hours.

Behind the Surge: The Role of Address Poisoning

The mystery behind these records begins to dissipate thanks to the research activity of onchain analyst Andrey Sergeenkov. Their investigation points out that the spike in transactions is closely connected to a plague of “address poisoning”—a scheme where fraudsters generate wallets that resemble legitimate addresses and flood victims with micro-transactions of stablecoins, often under $1.

The mechanism is ingeniously simple: these attacks insert fake addresses into the user’s transaction history. Since wallets only display abbreviated prefixes and suffixes, when the user copies an address from the history without checking each character, they may inadvertently send real funds to the attacker’s similar address. What seemed to be a routine transaction turns into a real financial loss.

The analysis revealed that around 67% of newly active addresses received less than $1 in their first stablecoin transactions—a pattern that does not match organic onboarding. Of the total of 5.78 million new addresses analyzed, approximately 3.86 million suffered this contaminated “dusting” as the first transaction. To orchestrate this large-scale operation, Sergeenkov tracked USDT and USDC transfers of less than $1 from senders that hit at least 10,000 unique addresses. The result: smart contracts sending minimal amounts to hundreds of thousands of wallets, funded by functions specifically designed to distribute batch spam.

The Spam Economy: How Lower Rates Fueled the Attack

Previously, address poisoning was a limited fraud tactic—economically viable only on isolated occasions. But the Fusaka upgrade in December transformed the equation. With transaction fees dropping significantly after this upgrade, the cost of contaminating millions of addresses simultaneously has become negligible.

Sergeenkov identifies this critical point: the now low enough costs have turned what was an interesting—but rare—research activity on fraud into an economically viable strategy for attackers. Sending a million micro-transactions of spam, which would have cost hundreds of dollars before, now costs a fraction of that. Fee reduction, while celebrated as a technical victory, has created the perfect conditions for fraud automation on a scale never seen before.

This dynamic fundamentally complicates how we interpret Ethereum’s record highs. Low rates and smooth performance indicate technical resilience, yes. But they also democratize spam. If a significant portion of the activity is low-value noise, raw transaction spikes reveal less about demand for block space, dApp adoption, or Ethereum’s fundamental strength, and more about the economic viability of automated fraud.

Markets React: Ethereum Dashes Hopes as Gold Shines

The broader market presents a mosaic of contradictory movements, suggesting that investors are still processing the risk scenario.

Bitcoin traded slightly higher at $85,320, with gains of 0.74% in the last hour, but loses strength on longer timeframes with a drop of 4.89% in 24 hours and 4.17% in the last week. The $92,000 that seemed solid days ago is now far away.

Ether It remains around $2,840, up marginally by 0.86% in the last hour, but fails to recover the accumulated losses of 5.57% in 24 hours. Meanwhile, monthly gains of 7.2% are under pressure.

Gold It soared to near $4,675 in Asian trading, breaking records as Trump’s threat of tariffs on eight European countries stokes fears of trade war. Wall Street analysts project gold to reach approximately $5,180 in 2026, implying a gain of 19.3% since the close of 2025. The demand for safe-haven assets is accelerating.

Nikkei 225 fell 0.7% as 40-year bond yields hit new highs, with Asia-Pacific markets trading cautiously due to renewed U.S.-EU tariff tensions and growing political uncertainty ahead of a possible early election in Japan.

Beyond Ethereum: NFTs, Dogecoin, and Changes in the Crypto Landscape

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin has directed criticism at the current state of governance structures, calling for “different and better DAOs”—a comment that resonates as the community reconsiders how to govern protocols in growth contexts.

NFTs and Digital Property: Countering industry death narratives, analysts indicate that wealthy crypto collectors continue to drive NFT markets. Pudgy Penguins emerges as one of the strongest NFT brands of the current cycle, pivoting from speculative “digital luxury goods” to a multi-vertical consumer IP platform. Physical/digital products have accumulated more than $13M in retail sales and more than 1M units sold, while Pudgy Party has surpassed 500K downloads in just two weeks. The PENGU token has been distributed to more than 6 million wallets.

Dogecoin Under Pressure: DOGE fell approximately 7% during the broader correction, with the memecoin underperforming larger coins in an overall risk-off move. The token broke below the critical support at $0.1218 with elevated volume, flipping this level into short-term resistance. Traders look at the zone between $0.115 and $0.12 as a critical decision area: a rebound above $0.1218 would suggest stabilization, while a drop below $0.115 would open the bearish path towards $0.108 to $0.10.

Continued research activity revealing these hidden patterns of fraud and market movement will be critical in the coming cycles—determining what is real demand versus economic noise has never been more important for investors trying to separate signal from noise in the crypto space.