Ethereum's record-breaking 2.9 million transactions in a single day may be primarily driven by "address poisoning" attacks.

PANews reported on January 20th, citing CoinDesk, that while Ethereum network activity has surged recently, reaching a new daily record of 2.9 million transactions, the ETH price has reacted tepidly. This may be due to a large-scale "address poisoning" attack rather than genuine user demand growth. Research found that approximately 80% of the abnormal increase in new addresses was related to stablecoins, and about 67% of newly active addresses made their first transfers of less than $1, consistent with "dust attacks." In the analyzed sample, approximately 3.86 million addresses received "poisoned dust" in their first stablecoin transaction. Attackers used smart contracts to send small amounts of stablecoins to hundreds of thousands of addresses, polluting users' transaction history and inducing them to mistakenly transfer large sums of money to fake, similar addresses. The significant drop in transaction fees after the Fusaka upgrade in early December last year made such low-cost attacks feasible. This suggests that Ethereum's record transaction volume may be exaggerated by spam transactions, weakening its credibility as a signal of increased network demand, and the market has not viewed it as a positive catalyst for ETH prices.