- The Ethereum Fusaka upgrade on December 3 slashed gas fees but also catalyzed a massive surge in address poisoning scams.
- Independent researcher Andrey Sergeenkov reports daily poisoning attacks increased nearly six-fold, with losses soaring from $4.9 million to over $63.3 million in a 73-day period post-upgrade.
- Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin places user protection responsibility entirely on wallet and UX layers, but research shows few wallets provide explicit warnings.
Ethereum’s long-awaited Fusaka upgrade, which went live on December 3, achieved its goal of radically cheaper transactions but inadvertently empowered scammers. Consequently, independent researcher Andrey Sergeenkov documented a six-fold increase in daily address poisoning attacks, rising from 30,000 to as high as 350,000 following the upgrade.
Sergeenkov’s analysis reveals confirmed victim losses skyrocketed from $4.9 million to $63.3 million in comparable post-upgrade windows. Even excluding a single $50 million outlier, losses still increased 2.7-fold, highlighting the severe cost of cheaper on-chain activity.
Meanwhile, Ethereum leadership has not implemented protocol-level countermeasures. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin argues user safety is a wallet-ui concern, yet research found only three of 53 studied wallets issue explicit poisoning warnings. However, Namefi CEO Z. Victor Zhou suggests using addresses with leading zeros could create a costly asymmetry for attackers.
Sergeenkov warns that “the wallets aren’t ready, and the protocol keeps scaling anyway,” as each upgrade structurally produces new attack vectors. For protection, he advises never copying addresses from transaction history and avoiding transfers when fatigued. Ultimately, he advocates for a fundamental redesign where the financial risk of an attack inherently rules it out.
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