An Oct. 7 investigation by blockchain analytics firm Bitquery revealed that addresses matching scam patterns accounted for 58% of net growth in Polygon's USDT0 holders since August 2025. The findings challenge Polygon's recent milestone celebration of surpassing 8.1 million USDT0 holder addresses, exposing significant address-poisoning activity across the network.
Bitquery Uncovers Address Poisoning and Declining Balances
According to Bitquery, approximately 998,000 of the 1.71 million addresses added over the preceding 13 months exhibited traits tied to address-poisoning scams. Scammers create wallet addresses resembling legitimate transfer destinations and send tiny token fractions to victims, leaving dust balances that register as active holders. The investigation identified around 1.42 million total addresses matching poisoning patterns, with sample-based verification estimating 1.1 million scam look-alikes.
During this growth phase, overall financial metrics for USDT0 on Polygon experienced a sharp decline:
- Total USDT0 supply on Polygon fell 41%, dropping from $1.35 billion to $798 million.
- Addresses holding at least $10 in USDT0 declined 42%, falling from 1.24 million to 720,000.
- Approximately 48% of holder addresses held less than one cent ($0.01).
- Around 65% of holders recorded zero incoming or outgoing token transactions over the preceding year.
Polygon's Stablecoin Landscape and Payments Drive
The findings coincide with Polygon's strategic pivot toward becoming a primary stablecoin payments network. Data from Growthepie indicates Polygon processed more wallet-to-wallet stablecoin transfers over seven days than Ethereum mainnet, and more than Base and Arbitrum combined. However, Bitquery noted its findings do not establish whether genuine USDT0 payment volumes decreased alongside shrinking capital balances.
According to DeFiLlama, Polygon hosts $2.93 billion in total stablecoins. Circle's USDC leads the network with $1.62 billion (55.29% market share), where enterprise initiatives like Circle integrating USDC into SAP Pay expand institutional footprint. Tether's USDT0 ranks second with $795 million (27% share). The current token metrics follow Polygon's August 2025 upgrade from bridged USDT to native USDT0, where 67% of current holders first held tokens prior to the transition.
Why It Matters
This discrepancy highlights the ongoing challenge of relying on raw wallet address counts to measure genuine blockchain adoption. While transaction volume figures appear robust, the concentration of inactive dust balances and address-poisoning operations inflates user metrics across major network ecosystems. Institutional participants and payment processors will likely look beyond surface-level wallet counts toward verified active balances when evaluating true network utility.
