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What is address poisoning?
Address poisoning is a scam where an attacker creates a wallet address that starts and ends with the same characters as one you use, then sends a tiny or zero-value transfer from it so it appears in your history. The hope is that you later copy the fake address instead of the real one.
What it means for you
Wallets often shorten addresses to the first and last few characters, which is exactly what the fake one matches. Compare the whole address, not just the ends, and copy it from a saved contact or the real recipient rather than from your transaction history. A payment to the wrong address cannot be pulled back.
A common mistake: “A transfer of zero tokens cannot hurt me, so I can ignore it.”
In fact: The zero transfer takes nothing, but its purpose is to plant a lookalike address in your history. The loss comes later, if you copy that address for a real payment.
How it works
Many wallets display an address shortened to its first and last few characters, and people learn to check only those. An attacker watches your transaction history, then generates an address whose opening and closing characters match one you use; ERC-8117 notes this takes seconds on ordinary hardware, while the 32 characters in the middle differ. The attacker sends a zero-value transfer from the lookalike so it appears in your history. The next time you copy a recipient from that history, you may copy the attacker's address instead, and the payment goes to them.
An example
For example, your real recipient is 0xd28b...6922 and a lookalike 0xd28b...6922 appears in your history after a zero-value transfer. Both look identical in a shortened view. Comparing the full 42 characters, or pasting from a saved contact, shows the middle characters differ completely.
Source: ERC-8117 (draft): Anti-Poisoning Compact EVM Address Format, Motivation · checked 4 October 2026
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