Tally, a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) governance platform built on Ethereum, is shutting down after five years of operation in the crypto industry.

 

The decision, according to co-founder and CEO Dennison Bertram, was driven by a lack of sustainability in the decentralized governance tooling industry. Despite its success as a DAO governance platform, Bertram said Tally had not yet realized its original vision.

 

“We have spent years championing the DAO vision. But at some point, you have to accept the world as it is, not as you hoped it would be. The reality is that we can no longer build a viable business around this,” he said.

 

Bertram also said Tally will not move forward with its ICO plans, adding that the team was not confident it could fulfill any promises it would make to token holders if it sold them tokens.

 

Prior to the announcement, Tally had built a notable presence in the crypto space, including:

• Serving over one million users, with tens of millions of tokenholder addresses participating in governance through its platform.
• Processing more than $1 billion in crypto payments and, at one point, helping secure over $80 billion through systems it supported.
• Supporting hundreds of organizations on its governance platform, including Uniswap DAO, Arbitrum, zkSync, Wormhole, and EigenLayer.

 

Reflecting on these successes, as well as Tally’s ability to avoid major security incidents and navigate regulatory uncertainty under the previous SEC chair, Tally CEO Dennison Bertram said he was “incredibly proud” of what the team had accomplished.

 

Although the team will wind down operations by the end of the month, it is working with major partners to ensure its enterprise clients continue to be served and will keep its interface live until the transition is complete.

 

 

The Crypto Community Reacted

The announcement of Tally’s shutdown was met with disappointment across the crypto community, with some describing it as the “end of an era” and others recounting their experiences using the platform during the early days of Arbitrum and Uniswap governance.

 

“I still remember writing governance proposals for Uniswap on Tally back in 2021. Those were fun times. It’s disappointing that DAOs didn’t meet expectations. While stablecoins have achieved the strongest product-market fit in crypto, I still believe DAOs will ultimately get there, though perhaps not for another three to 10 years,” said Getty Hill, CEO of DeFi trading platform Oku Trade.

 

“Human labor coordination is one of the hardest problems. DAOs will need to evolve, and their applications must improve. The 2020–2021 era of DAO governance was a lot of fun,” he added.

 

 

 

Trust Wallet has introduced a new address-poisoning protection feature that prevents crypto users from falling for address-poisoning attacks.

 

According to the company, this new feature automatically checks the destination address against a database of known scam and lookalike addresses to prevent malicious transactions. Because the feature runs automatically, users will receive real-time warnings if a risk is detected.

 

For now, the feature will be supported on 32 Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) chains, including Ethereum, BNB Smart Chain, Polygon, Optimism, Arbitrum, Avalanche, and Base.

 

The Menace of Address Poisoning

Address poisoning is a phishing-style attack in which scammers trick users into sending cryptocurrency to the wrong wallet address, usually one that closely resembles a legitimate address. 

 

Here’s how address poisoning works:

• A scammer generates a look-alike wallet address, typically one that shares the same first and last characters as a legitimate address.
• The attacker then sends a tiny, or “dust,” amount of crypto to an unsuspecting user.
• The fake address subsequently appears in the victim’s transaction history.
• Because crypto transactions are irreversible, the user may mistakenly send funds to the poisoned address, losing them permanently.

 

While address poisoning may not look as sophisticated or complex as other forms of crypto attacks, it has had a long history of success for scammers. 

 

In May 2024, a user accidentally sent 1,155 Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) worth approximately $68 million to a fake address. The attacker created a fake address that looked like the legitimate address, and due to lack of proper scrutiny, the user fell for it.

 

While in May 2025, a trader lost $2.6 million after falling for two address poisoning scams, and later that year, another trader lost $50 million in USDT after sending them to a poisoned wallet address.

 

 

Address Poisoning is Just a Numbers Game

Knowing that most crypto users rarely fall for address poisoning scams (roughly 1 success per 10,000 attempts), attackers often rely on scale to succeed. 

 

Between July 2022 and June 2024, over 270 million address poisoning attempts were recorded across the Ethereum and BNB Chain, with 6,633 of these attempts successful, leading to a loss of over $83 million. 

 

In another address poisoning campaign, scammers used 82,031 fake addresses on 2,774 victims. The result? Over $69 million was lost. 

 

And just last year, there were about 32,290 recorded address poisoning attacks in September, which affected over 6,000 victims.