$1.2 Billion Lost From Hacks on DeFi Platforms: Immunefi

In the first quarter of this year, DeFi hacking cost the company $1.2 billion.

New, poorly constructed DeFi Dapps are also blamed for these attacks.

The total value of DeFi protocols equals 10.6% of the total crypto market cap.

Decentralized Finance use rose in 2021 and 2022. But hackers and exploiters have taken more money this year than ever before from these dapps.

Affluent DeFi Hackers

According to Immunefi, the DeFi crypto market lost $1.22 billion in the first three months of 2022.

Last year, all DeFi hacks combined only cost the market $154 million. That's a 692 percent increase in money lost.

However, the Ronin hack last week is accountable for over half of the $1.22 billion damages.

The exploiter managed to steal private keys to authorise fraudulent transactions.

But, according to Immunefi CEO and Founder Mitchell Amador, this is just the start of things becoming worse. 

“We may expect more [advanced] attacks as more criminal groups develop DeFi-hacking expertise in-house. Also, as DeFi grows, these attacks become more lucrative.”

The Last Three Months' Hacks

The Wormhole attack, which resulted in a $320 million heist after 120k coins were stolen from the site, was the second most major hack this quarter.

Another important attack was the Qubit Finance protocol exploit, when $80 million was stolen by abusing the smart contract that created xETH, which the hacker used as collateral.

This shows that no matter how safe or thorough a protocol is developed, hackers will always look for a single flaw that may be exploited.