DefiLlama: Crypto hacks comprise $7.7b in losses since 2016

The first recorded crypto hack

The oldest recorded crypto hack was perpetuated on “The DAO”, a decentralized autonomous organization focused on venture capital funding. Launched in April 2016, the initiative was hacked two months later in June, and lost roughly $60 million.

Hackers utilized a reentrancy bug to execute a withdrawal function multiple times within a single transaction, allowing the funds to be drained.

Ronin’s record $600m crypto hack

Axie Infinity’s Ronin bridge lost over $600 million in a crypto hack attributed to North Korea’s infamous cybercriminal group, Lazarus. It remains the crypto’s largest single-protocol exploit to date.

As crypto.news reported, Lazarus robbed hundreds of millions in Ethereum (ETH) and Circle’s stablecoin USD Coin (USDC), after compromising Ronin’s private keys. Ronin has staged a comeback this year, following support from exchanges like Binance and coin listings on Coinbase.

Although security remains a crypto pain point, experts opine that the industry will ultimately achieve more resistance against bad actors as stakeholders establish better relationships.

We believe that the cryptocurrency industry will gradually attain comprehensive security over time. This necessitates the industry’s steady growth, coupled with effective collaboration between governments, law enforcement agencies, and the crypto sector.

Slava Demchuk, AMLBot co-founder and CEO