While Ethereum (ETH) is experiencing massive increases in network activity and reaching new records, the price is moving in the opposite direction.
While this situation has attracted market attention, a noteworthy Ethereum report has come from Citibank.
According to CoinDesk, Citibank has linked the increase in activity on the Ethereum network to potential fraudulent transactions.
According to Citibank analysts Alex Saunders and Vinh Vo, the recent increase in Ethereum’s daily transaction volume and number of active addresses may be due to address poisoning scams.
The bank stated in its report that a significant portion of recent transactions involved small amounts under $1, which is more consistent with fraudulent activity than with an influx of new users.
“We believe that a significant portion of recent new transactions on Ethereum consist of microtransactions under $1, which is closer to a fraudulent model than an influx of ordinary users.”
Citibank also stated that the low transaction fees on the Ethereum network attract attackers, allowing them to carry out these large-scale transactions at a lower cost on the ETH network.
This assessment is similar to an analysis previously presented by security researcher Andrey Sergeenkov.
Address poisoning is a fraud technique where attackers use wallet addresses generated from fake addresses that match the first and last characters of the user’s wallet address, aiming to trick the user into inadvertently sending money to the fake address.