Polygon’s 8.05M USDT0 Wallets Include 1.1M Look-Alike Addresses

Polygon had 8,098,017 wallets holding USDT0 as of 8 p.m. ET Oct. 6 (00:00 UTC Oct. 7), 2026, but nearly half held less than one cent, raising questions about what the wallet count represents.

About 48% of the wallets held less than $0.01, while fewer than one in 10 held at least $10. The number of wallets rose by 1,714,064 from 6,383,953 on Aug. 27, 2025, when Polygon replaced bridged USDT with native USDT0.

About 58% of the net increase matched address-poisoning patterns. Separately, about 1.1 million wallets, or roughly 13% of all holders, matched look-alike patterns through pattern detection and checks of sampled wallets.

The estimate does not establish that those wallets were confirmed poisoning wallets. Some addresses that fit the pattern may have other explanations, while some poisoning wallets may not meet the criteria.

Address poisoning involves sending a small amount of tokens from a wallet designed to resemble a legitimate address in a user’s transaction history. The goal is to induce the recipient to copy the look-alike address during a later transfer.

The 58% figure applies only to the net wallet increase after the 2025 upgrade, not to all 8.05 million wallets. The figures also count wallets rather than verified people. One person or exchange may control multiple wallets, while one exchange wallet may represent many customers. “Nobody can count people from the chain,” Bitquery said.

USDT0 is Tether’s cross-chain version of USDT. Polygon’s Aug. 27, 2025 upgrade changed bridged USDT to native USDT0 without requiring users to swap tokens, and balances remained at the same contract address.

The upgrade was intended to lower fees, deepen liquidity and speed transfers between networks supporting USDT0. Despite the wallet increase, USDT0 supply on Polygon fell from $1.35 billion at the upgrade to $798 million as of 8 p.m. ET Oct. 6 (00:00 UTC Oct. 7), a 41% decline.

Wallets holding at least $10 fell from about 1.24 million to roughly 720,000 over the same period, down 42%. About 65% of current holders had not sent or received USDT0 during the previous year, while about 67% first received the former bridged token before the upgrade.

The data does not establish whether genuine USDT0 payment volume declined.