Address‑poisoning and signature‑phishing wey don rise dey drain millions from crypto users

Address‑poisoning and signature‑phishing attacks rise well for end of 2025 and start of 2026, dem cause big losses and raise risk for crypto users and traders. Attackers dey use “dust” or full fake addresses wey match the visible beginning and end characters so victims wey copy from past transactions go paste malicious addresses. Scam Sniffer report two big address‑poisoning incidents wey thief $50 million for December 2025 and $12.2 million for January 2026. Blockchain trackers report hundreds of millions poisoning attempts across chains (especially Ethereum and BSC), with tens of millions dollars confirmed stolen and many more attempts tracked. Signature‑phishing — trick users to approve malicious contract calls or overly broad token allowances — also spike: for January attackers steal $6.27 million from 4,741 users (207% month‑on‑month rise), and two attacker wallets receive about 65% of those funds. Analysts link higher dust activity to lower gas costs after network upgrades (for example Ethereum’s Fusaka changes), wey make tiny spray‑and‑pray transfers cheap; Coin Metrics find large share of stablecoin balance updates under $0.01. Illicit proceeds dem often route into noncooperative protocols (notably into DAI) or concentrate for attacker wallets, make recovery hard. Report still note unrelated treasury exploit at Step Finance wey drain about $27.2 million in SOL. For traders: higher scam activity increase on‑chain noise, fit temporarily lift transaction counts and stablecoin flows, and fit raise short‑term volatility or reduce retail confidence — especially for users handling large transfers. Actions: always verify full destination addresses (no just visual fragments), avoid signing unknown contract approvals, regularly audit and revoke token allowances, use address whitelists and hardware wallets, and subscribe to on‑chain scam alerts from reputable trackers.