The crypto trade has misplaced simply over $30 billion to hackers since 2012, of which greater than 30% ($10.95 billion) was stolen from centralized exchanges, as revealed by analysis performed by blockchain safety agency SlowMist.
The safety agency reported that between 2012 and 2023, these exchanges suffered 118 hacks, with the 2 largest occurring in 2021 and accounting for almost $5 billion in total losses.
The information additionally signifies that almost all of large-scale hacks have taken place throughout bull market cycles.
By comparability, hackers have managed to mine lower than $1 billion straight from blockchain networks and cryptocurrency wallets throughout this time. Scorching wallets alone suffered losses amounting to $408.9 million, whereas blockchain networks misplaced a comparatively smaller sum of $207.2 million to malicious actors.
The non-fungible token (NFT) sector suffered losses amounting to $200 million, primarily as a result of phishing hyperlinks and social engineering scams.
Lastly, bridge protocol hacks accounted for simply over $2 billion of the whole funds stolen throughout this era.
Ecosystem losses
The information reveals that Ethereum and BNB Chain (previously Binance Sensible Chain) have been the toughest hit by hackers by way of variety of hacks and amount of cash misplaced.
Hackers stole $3.1 billion from the Ethereum ecosystem via 217 separate hacks. BNB Chain, however, posted losses of $1.45 billion throughout 162 separate hacks.
Regardless of being the third most ceaselessly focused, the EOS ecosystem comparatively misplaced a a lot smaller sum, totaling $25.9 million. In distinction, Solana and Polygon suffered substantial losses of $202.7 million and $177.9 million, respectively, regardless of fewer assaults – 13 for Solana and 16 for Polygon.
The Avalanche community has been compromised eight instances, leading to a cumulative lack of $127.7 million.
The search additionally consists of knowledge from chains equivalent to Tron, Fantom, Polkadot and HECO. Collectively, these channels have suffered fewer than 50 hacks and misplaced lower than $200 million.
Lastly, the remaining $10.9 billion of whole stolen funds fall beneath the “Different” class in line with SlowMist. This class encompasses all different kinds of hacks, scams, raffles and numerous types of digital theft not explicitly talked about.