Crypto ‘address misuse’ drained $574.8M in ETH and BNB — USENIX study

In a recent study titled “Lost in Blockchain Address Misuse: Hidden Cross-Platform Risks and Their Security Impact,” published by USENIX Security, researchers examined the issue of “Address Misuse.”  

The researchers found 65,340 cases of high-risk address misuse in which approximately 2.5 million transactions were involved. The corresponding losses came to 17,726.7 Binance [BNB] and 126,982.94 Ethereum [ETH].

The researchers calculated address-misuse losses to be worth over $574.8 million. This, in reference to May 2025’s prices of $4,408 per ETH and $847 per BNB.

In this, 49,344 high-risk addresses and approximately 1.6 million transactions were the cause of Contract Account (CA) misuse. This led to losses of 22,738.41 ETH and 8,681.41 BNB.

Additionally, cases involving GitHub alone included 21,160 BNB Chain addresses and 26,908 Ethereum addresses. They were associated with losses of 7,513.66 BNB and 19,229.40 ETH. 

Case study

The UniswapV2Router02 address 0xC532…4008 on Sepolia was highlighted by the researchers as having approximately 158,775 transactions by August 2025.

Even though the same address lacked a contract code on the Ethereum mainnet, 88 transactions were sent to it by users.