Crypto phishing losses collapsed 83% to $83.85 million in 2025, a massive retraction from the $494 million lost in 2024. A new annual report from security firm Scam Sniffer attributes the drop to improved wallet warnings and cooling market activity in Q4, though it warns of technical shifts in how attackers operate.
Volume Drops, Vectors Shift
The number of victims fell 68% to 106,106, down from over 330,000 the previous year. The average loss per victim also declined, with the year’s largest single theft capping at $6.5 million, a significant decrease from the $55 million single-wallet drain recorded in 2024.
However, the reduction in raw volume masked the emergence of highly technical attack vectors following Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade in May 2025. Attackers began exploiting EIP-7702, a standard designed to improve account abstraction, to bundle malicious permissions into single signatures.
The Pectra upgrade introduced EIP-7702 malicious signatures… allowing attackers to exploit account abstraction and bundle multiple harmful actions.
Two specific EIP-7702 attacks in August drained $2.54 million, confirming that drainer-as-a-service (DaaS) infrastructure pivoted quickly to new protocols.
Market Correlation Remains Absolute
Phishing activity continued to track market liquidity tightly. The third quarter of 2025, which saw Ethereum hit an all-time high of $4,946, accounted for the year’s peak losses at $31.04 million (37% of the annual total). As prices cooled in Q4, losses dropped to just $13.09 million.
Despite the new EIP-7702 vector, legacy methods remain dominant. Permit signatures accounted for 38% of all major thefts exceeding $1 million, including the $6.5 million September incident.
