- An Ethereum user lost $600,000 to an ‘address poisoning’ scam on Tuesday, February 17, 2026.
- Scammers use look-alike wallet addresses with matching first and last characters to trick users into sending funds to the wrong destination.
- This incident follows a similar $350,000 loss last week where a victim sent a test transaction but still failed to confirm the address correctly.
- Tooling from Ethereum Foundation members proposes a visual solution, but using an address book is considered safer.
- Address poisoning attacks have surged since Ethereum’s Fusaka upgrade reduced transaction costs in December 2025.
An Ethereum user suffered a devastating $600,000 loss on Tuesday morning to a prevalent crypto scam called ‘address poisoning.’ The high-profile incident was highlighted by onchain investigator SpecterAnalyst, who warned users to always verify the entire wallet address.
This costly error mirrors a loss from just last week, where another user was tricked out of over $350,000. Consequently, attackers spam victims with transactions from fabricated, similar-looking addresses after a genuine transfer.
The strategy relies on users copying these spoofed addresses for future payments. However, block explorers often shorten addresses, hiding the crucial middle characters that differentiate real from fake.
Meanwhile, Ethereum Foundation members propose a tool for visual truncation while keeping the full text searchable. Despite this, security best practices strongly recommend using a saved address book instead.
Following Ethereum’s Fusaka upgrade, which lowered fees, address poisoning has surged dramatically. Consequently, research from Andrey Sergeenkov shows a sharp increase in newly created addresses.
SpecterAnalyst also drew attention to last week’s $350,000 case. In that instance, the victim sent a test transaction to the scammer’s address but failed to properly verify it before sending the main amount.
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