According to the latest figures, the crypto industry has suffered $336.3 million in losses due to hacks and scams in the first quarter so far. report from web3 bug bounty and security services platform Immunefi.
With almost $100 billion Of the total value captured in web3 protocols, DeFi remains a primary target for hackers, accounting for 100% of the exploits identified by Immunefi in the first quarter, compared to zero for centralized (CeFi) platforms.
The majority of losses were from two projects alone, accounting for a combined $144.5 million, or 43%, of the total. An $81.7 million exploit of the cross-chain bridge protocol Orbit Bridge, while New Year’s celebrations were underway, represented the largest attack. January witnessed the highest monthly losses in the first quarter at $133 million.
At the end of the quarter, the recent $62 million exploit of the Blast-based NFT game Munchables was the second largest attack. However, the money was recovered within 24 hours after the hacker agreed to hand over the private keys to the wallet containing Munchables’ assets.
A total of $73.9 million (22%) of the stolen funds were recovered from seven of the exploits in the first quarter. The number of attacks also fell by 17.6%, from 74 in the first quarter of 2023 to 61 in the first quarter of this year.
Crypto Losses Q1 2024. Image: Immune.
However, the losses of $336.3 million represent a decline of 23.1% compared to the losses of $437.5 million in the same quarter last year.
“While it is positive that overall losses have declined, it is essential to note that DeFi faced significant challenges, accounting for 100% of total losses in the first quarter of 2024,” said Mitchell Amador, Founder and CEO of Immunefi. “Notably, the ecosystem witnessed a significant volume of losses due to private key compromise, highlighting the critical need to secure both the code and protocol infrastructure.”
Hacks dominate as Ethereum surpasses BNB Chain as the most targeted network
Hacks dominated first quarter losses, accounting for 95.6% ($321.6 million) of the total of 46 incidents, compared to fraud, scams and rug-pulling incidents of 4.4% ($14.7 million) over 15 incidents.
Ethereum surpassed BNB Chain to once again become the most targeted chain in the first quarter, with the two networks taking the majority of the overall losses at a combined 73%.
Ethereum witnessed the most individual attacks, with 33 incidents – representing 51% of losses. BNB Chain witnessed twelve attacks, representing 22% of the funds operated. Arbitrum, Solana, Optimism, Bitcoin, Blast, Polygon, Conflux Network and Base made up the rest of the incidents.
In December, Immunefi reported that crypto users had lost $1.8 billion to hacks and scams throughout 2023.
Immunefi claims to have paid more than $95 million in bounties and saved more than $25 billion in user funds through protocols like Chainlink, The Graph, Synthetix and MakerDAO.
