Term
Dust
Dust is a tiny amount of cryptocurrency left in a wallet — small enough that spending it would cost more in transaction fees than the amount itself. Dust also appears in "dusting attacks" where scammers send tiny amounts to try to link addresses together.
Dust is a leftover balance too small to spend economically. On Bitcoin, "dust" is typically a UTXO smaller than the network fee required to include it in a transaction — moving it would cost more than the value it holds. On EVM chains, dust is a token balance too small to pay for its own gas.
A "dusting attack" is a chain-analysis technique. An attacker sends tiny amounts of a token to thousands of addresses, then watches which addresses later consolidate that dust into a single transaction with their main balances. The consolidation links the previously-unlinked addresses together, weakening the target's on-chain privacy.
The defense is simple: do not spend received dust of unknown origin. Modern wallets often let you "freeze" or ignore specific UTXOs. If the dust is negligible in value, leaving it alone forever is the correct move — it does not force you to consolidate.
Want to put this to work?