Ethereum hits 1.29M active addresses, but security risks loom – Why?

Activity on the Ethereum [ETH] network has never been higher. In a post on X, Token Terminal revealed that the daily active addresses surpassed those of the Layer 2 solutions.

On the 16th of January, the number of Active Addresses was 1.297 million, according to Etherscan data.

At the time of writing, this figure has dropped to 945k. Yet, the trend was unmistakable. The Fusaka upgrade was completed in early December, which cut network transfer fees by nearly 6x.

This has likely had other consequences, as blockchain security specialist Andrey Sergeenkov wrote.

Dusting and poisoning on Ethereum

The specialist found that the massive increase in the number of active addresses and on-chain transactions was due to stablecoin transactions. 67% of the new addresses received less than 1 dollar as their first stablecoin transaction.

Sergeenkov identified this as “dust” and also found smart contracts that automate the mass distribution of poisoning dust.

This is address poisoning. Attackers send small amounts of tokens, or dust, to wallets using addresses that closely match their own. Later, when these users copy an address from their transaction history without closely checking it, they end up sending funds to the attacker.

Even with a low conversion rate of 0.01%, $740k has been stolen from 116 addresses in this way. It should be said that $509k came from a single victim.

Assessing the fundamentals

The Fusaka upgrade was a success. Cheap transactions should be the goal for any network. This would be a key step toward “institutionalization“. AMBCrypto pointed out that Ethereum was the leader in the real-world asset (RWA) sector, controlling roughly 60% of the market.

Aggressive ETH accumulation from entities such as Bitmine was a positive sign. In Q4 2025, Ethereum treasuries acquired 1.2 million ETH. On-chain metrics also highlight buyer dominance in the spot markets, reflecting absorption instead of distribution.

The kind of divergence between price and fundamentals right now, argued Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan, is what marks the bottom of bear markets.

Final Thoughts

• The record-high daily active addresses were not as hopeful a sign as it appears on first glance.
• Despite the threat from address poisoning, fundamentals, including on-chain metrics and institutional demand, remained strong.