Ethereum's daily transaction volume set a record of 2.9 million transactions, possibly driven by "address poisoning" attacks

According to CoinDesk, recent on-chain activity on the Ethereum network has surged, reaching a new high of 2.9 million transactions in a single day, but the ETH price has reacted tepidly. This may be due to a large-scale "address poisoning" attack rather than a genuine increase in user demand.

Research has found that about 80% of the abnormal growth in new addresses is related to stablecoins, and approximately 67% of new active addresses made their first transfer of less than $1, consistent with the characteristics of "dust attacks." In the analyzed sample, around 3.86 million addresses received "poisoning dust" from their first stablecoin transaction. Attackers used smart contracts to send tiny amounts of stablecoins to hundreds of thousands of addresses, contaminating user transaction histories and luring them into mistakenly transferring large sums to counterfeit similar addresses.

After the Fusaka upgrade in early December last year, transaction fees dropped significantly, making such low-cost attacks feasible. This indicates that the record transaction volume on Ethereum may be inflated by spam transactions, undermining its credibility as a signal of increased network demand, and the market has not viewed it as a positive catalyst for ETH prices.