Polygon’s surging USDT0 holder rely masks shrinking balances and suspected rip-off exercise amid its broader push into stablecoin funds.
An Oct. 7 investigation by blockchain analytics agency Bitquery discovered that addresses matching rip-off patterns accounted for 58% of the web progress in Polygon’s USDT0 holders since August 2025, elevating questions in regards to the high quality of adoption figures promoted by the community.
The findings problem Polygon’s current celebration of surpassing 8.1 million USDT0 holder addresses, the best amongst blockchains included in a Token Terminal comparability.
In line with Bitquery, roughly 998,000 of the 1.71 million addresses added over the previous 13 months exhibited patterns related to address-poisoning scams.
The expansion got here as USDT0 provide on Polygon fell 41%, from $1.35 billion to $798 million. Addresses holding a minimum of $10 additionally declined 42%, from roughly 1.24 million to 720,000.
Bitquery discovered that 48% of holders managed lower than one cent, whereas 65% had neither despatched nor obtained the token throughout the previous 12 months.
The investigation additionally recognized roughly 1.42 million addresses matching an address-poisoning sample, with sample-based verification supporting an estimate of 1.1 million rip-off look-alikes.
Tackle poisoning includes scammers creating pockets addresses that resemble legit cost locations and sending tiny transactions to potential victims, hoping they mistakenly copy the fraudulent addresses when transferring funds.
These addresses can retain fractional token balances, permitting them to rely as holders. Bitquery cautioned that its classification was probabilistic and didn’t quantify losses from the suspected scams.
The findings replicate Polygon’s August 2025 improve from bridged USDT to native USDT0, which preserved current token balances and contract addresses. About 67% of present holders first obtained Tether earlier than the improve.
Polygon’s funds ambitions face a measurement drawback
The findings arrive as Polygon more and more positions itself as a stablecoin funds community, competing for cost processors, institutional liquidity and cross-border settlement exercise.
That technique has coincided with important transaction progress.
Blockchain analytics platform Growthepie not too long ago reported that Polygon processed extra wallet-to-wallet stablecoin transactions over seven days than Ethereum’s mainnet, and greater than Base and Arbitrum mixed.
The metric excludes decentralized finance contracts, though transfers related to automated exercise, together with handle poisoning, might nonetheless contribute to transaction counts.
In the meantime, DeFiLlama information reveals Polygon holds roughly $2.93 billion in stablecoins, with Circle’s USDC accounting for $1.62 billion, or 55.29% of the market.
Tether stays the community’s second-largest stablecoin, with roughly $795 million in provide, representing about 27% of the overall.
The figures counsel that Polygon’s broader stablecoin exercise has developed otherwise from Tether’s shrinking capital base, though Bitquery’s findings don’t set up whether or not real USDT0 cost volumes have declined.
