Ethereum's Post-Fusaka Surge: Measuring Real Usage vs. Dust Flows

The Fusaka upgrade activated on December 3, 2025, marking a key step in Ethereum's scaling roadmap. Its immediate impact was a dramatic surge in on-chain activity, with average daily transactions jumping to ~2.89 million and active addresses rising roughly 60% above pre-upgrade levels. This spike was widely interpreted as the upgrade's backend enhancements, particularly PeerDAS for data availability, beginning to lower fees and boost capacity.

The flow surge extended into January, with Goldman Sachs highlighting a record 427,000 daily new addresses for the month. That figure sets a new all-time high and far exceeds the 162,000 daily average from the 2020 DeFi Summer. On a month-over-month basis, January saw Ethereum's daily active addresses, new addresses, and transaction counts all climb by over 25%, signaling a powerful acceleration in network engagement.

Yet this initial flow data presents a complex picture. While the upgrade's technical goals are clear, a portion of the reported growth appears inflated by address poisoning attacks. Research suggests stablecoin dust transfers under a penny account for ~26% of active addresses post-Fusaka, indicating a significant fraction of the surge may not reflect genuine user adoption. The catalyst was real, but the flow is not yet pure.

The Dust Problem: Separating Signal from Noise

The post-Fusaka surge in activity is being distorted by a significant volume of low-value "dust" transactions. Analysis of stablecoin flows reveals that 43% of USDC and USDT balance updates are under $1, with 38% of those transfers under a single penny. These are not genuine user payments; they are the digital equivalent of spam, sent with no economic purpose other than to seed wallets for future attacks.

This dust activity has become a measurable part of the network's daily flow. Post-upgrade, stablecoin dust is estimated to account for ~11% of all Ethereum transactions and ~26% of active addresses on an average day. That means nearly a quarter of the reported user base is composed of wallets receiving fractions of a cent, inflating metrics and creating noise that obscures true adoption.

The mechanism is known as "address poisoning." Attackers exploit the lower fees enabled by Fusaka to launch spray attacks, sending tiny amounts to thousands of wallets simultaneously. The top attacker address alone sent nearly 3 million dust transfers to over a million unique recipients. While the total value of these transfers is trivial, the volume is massive and directly responsible for the spike in low-value activity that skews the data.

Catalysts and Risks: What to Watch for Real Growth

The critical divergence to watch is between total transaction volume and high-value, fee-paying activity. As dust transfers normalize, the network's true health will be revealed by whether the remaining, higher-value transactions can sustain the elevated fee revenue. The current spike in low-value flows is a statistical artifact; the real test is if genuine users and applications are paying the higher fees required for meaningful on-chain activity.

The record new address growth must translate into sustained engagement. A daily influx of 427,000 new wallets is impressive, but the risk is that many are temporary or poisoned. The key metric is wallet funding and subsequent activity. If these addresses remain dormant or are quickly abandoned, the surge is merely noise. Sustained growth requires these new users to deposit ETH, interact with dApps, and pay fees over time.

The primary risk is that inflated activity metrics mask underlying issues. The current data shows a network where a significant portion of reported users are receiving fractions of a cent. This distorts every major on-chain metric, creating a misleading picture of health and adoption. Investors and builders must look beyond the headline numbers to see if the core network-defined by meaningful transactions and funded wallets-is actually growing.