TL;DR Breakdown
- $8.89bn lost to crypto hack in 2021.
- Bulk of hack was on DeFi industry.
SlowMist Technology, a Chinese cybersecurity firm, has revealed that the crypto industry lost a whopping $9.8 billion dollars to crypto hacks and ransomware attacks.
The firm made the disclosure in its yearly report. This year’s report was titled ‘Review of blockchain security ecology in 2021, global losses exceed 9.8 billion U.S. dollars.
SlowMist also highlighted that most of the crypto hacks came from one particular sector, the decentralized finance (defi), with almost 73 percent of all stolen money from the crypto hacks coming from various defi protocols amounting to nearly $7 billion.
According to the report, around 231 hacks and security breaches occurred in the crypto industry with defi protocols victims 171 times. The Defi ecosystem, one of the most utilized sector is also one of the most exploited.
Rise in crypto adoption equals rise in crypto industry hacks?
2021 undoubtedly has been the year of mainstream crypto adoption as institutions began trooping into the industry in their minions. However, the surge in interest and adoption possibly led to hike in the number of security breaches and hacks in the crypto industry.
With the DeFi sector the most attacked sector of the industry, it has raised a lot of issues because of its anonymous nature.
It is worthy to note that some of the biggest heists in crypto was ultimately returned due to the decentralized nature of the blockchain, where it became near impossible for the hacker to launder money out of the systems.
One of such hack was the PolyNetwork hack, where the hackers managed to get their hands on assets worth more than $600 million.
The protocol alerted all exchanges and stablecoin issuers about the hacking address, which resulted in the blocking of any transactions from that account and later, all the stablecoins were also frozen.
