Ethereum Dust Attacks Spike After Fusaka Upgrade, Data Shows
If Ethereum is to be a world computer, consistent with its original vision, then it must be cheap to transact on. Remember the CryptoKitties boom of early 2018? Well, that was the first major stress test, and Ethereum failed.
Over the years, developers have been hard at work optimizing the network and balancing performance with gas fees. They have been largely successful. Ethereum is performant, and gas fees on the mainnet are attractively low. All this is thanks to the explosion of layer-2 alternatives like Base and Arbitrum, rerouting transactions from the mainnet.
But here’s the problem: cheap gas fees are now incentivizing “dust” attacks. New data shows tiny “dust” stablecoin transfers on Ethereum tripled after the Fusaka upgrade, even as the Ethereum price stayed muted.
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What Are “Dust” Transactions?
To get a handle on what’s going on: dust transactions are essentially meaningless transfers. For example, those $1 USDC transactions being sent back and forth between addresses occur because sending them costs less than $0.15 in ETH. While more transactions typically signal high network activity, spam transactions are not desirable.
(Source: Etherscan)
Dust transactions are to be expected when it costs the perpetrator almost nothing. If the initiator does not need to pay meaningful gas fees, or in this case, pays a fraction of a penny, then it becomes easier to spam the network. Lower fees invite real users first, but scammers follow quickly. Solana made this apparent.
(Source: CoinMetrics)
On Ethereum, attackers send these tiny USDC or USDT payments from wallet addresses that look almost identical to real ones. The goal is simple: trick you into copying the wrong address later. Trackers analyzed more than 227M stablecoin balance updates and found +43% involved transfers under $1, and +38% were under one cent.
As mentioned earlier, this behavior has no legitimate financial purpose. It exists solely to seed wallets with bait.
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Why Fusaka Update on Ethereum Made This Possible
When Fusaka went live in December, the goal was simple: lower gas fees and increased scalability. By implementing PeerDAS and raising the block gas limit to 60M, developers drastically boosted capacity. The result? Average gas fees fell by over +50%, with simple transfers ranging between $0.01 and $0.10. In past bullish cycles, transacting on Ethereum was a nightmare. Each transaction was easily over $10, reaching $50 at certain points.
Due to low gas fees, on-chain activity has been consistently high, with daily transactions averaging over 2M. In January, this peaked at 2.9M. What’s more? Daily active addresses have also risen, reflecting high on-chain activity.
Ordinarily, lower fees help normal users. Inadvertently, they also lower the cost of spam. Trackers show that stablecoin dust now makes up about 35% of all Ethereum transactions and over 25% of active addresses on a typical day. Before Fusaka, that figure sat closer to 3%–5%.
(Source: CoinMetrics)
It remains to be seen how developers will curb spam on-chain. The good news is that Ethereum has dealt with spam cycles before. Network-level defenses and ongoing Ethereum network defense efforts focus on filtering abuse without hurting everyday users.
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