The year is young but so far in 2023 hackers have stolen $119 million in crypto in 19 breaches, Crystal Blockchain says in a new report, which includes data ranging from the Mt. Gox crypto exchange hack in 2011 to Feb. 18, 2023. The biggest DeFi hack so far this year was February’s of Bonq DAO, a decentralized borrowing protocol. Hackers compromised the protocols’ smart contract and manipulated the price of allianceBlock tokens, draining about $88 million of crypto out of the protocol. The second-largest DeFi-related attack was on the Platypus Finance protocol, which issues the stablecoin USP. A flash loan attack in February led to the stablecoin depegging and a loss of about $9 million in funds by users. However, unlike many similar incidents, this one ended relatively well: The protocol was able to partly refund users and the investigators tracked down the hackers’ wallets to the Binance exchange, found out who they were and arrested two people in France. The report noted that in the single biggest phishing attack so far this year, non-fungible token (NFT) collector Kevin Rose lost about $1 million worth of NFTs after his personal wallet was compromised in late January. Most of the attacks have targeted vulnerabilities in the code and design of decentralized protocols, which reflects a larger trend in play since 2021: Decentralized finance (DeFi) has been much more popular among hackers than centralized exchanges (CEX). DeFi protocols were hacked 13 times more than centralized ones in 2022, according to Crystal. The biggest was an attack on the Ronin cross-chain bridge in March 2022, in which $625 million worth of tokens were stolen.

Full Crystal Blockchain report : $119M in Stolen Crypto So Far in 2023, NFT Rug Pulls on the Rise.

While these are the largest cryptocurrency hacks that have happened as of today in 2023, OODA has been compiling a comprehensive Web3 incident database based on our research to categorize what compromises are taking place as well as document the root causes that plague Cryptos, DeFi, NFTs, and Web3 in general. Tracking root causes provides comprehensive insights into how innovators can create robust cyber risk management approaches and reduce the potential for consequential attacks. You can access the OODA comprehensive Crypto Incident tracker here.