New research from cybersecurity firm SlowMist reveals that the Ethereum (ETH) ecosystem has lost $400 million in exploits year-to-date as the number of crypto hacking cases sees a 50% rise.
According to SlowMist’s 2024 mid-year report, the second largest digital asset by market cap saw the most funds lost due to exploits as an ecosystem, followed by layer-2 scaling solutions Arbitrum (ARB) and Blast.
“From an ecosystem perspective, Ethereum suffered the highest losses, amounting to $400 million. Followed by, Arbitrum incurred losses of $72.46 million, and Blast suffered losses of $70 million.
Additionally, Binance Smart Chain (BSC) experienced the highest number of security incidents, totaling 57, with losses of approximately $32.12 million.”
The firm says that based on its research, the digital assets industry saw a total of 223 security incidents during the first half of 2024 that resulted in a combined $1.43 billion worth of losses. The figure represents an increase of more than 50% from the $920 million lost during the first half of 2023.
SlowMist goes on to note that decentralized finance (DeFi) is the most attacked sector in crypto, comprising nearly 71% of all incidents in the first half of the year.
“From the project track perspective, DeFi is the most frequently attacked area. In the first half of 2024, there were 158 DeFi security incidents, accounting for 70.85% of the total incidents, with losses amounting to $659 million.
Compared to the first half of 2023 (111 incidents with losses of approximately $480 million), this represents a 37.29% year-on-year increase in losses.”
According to SlowMist, the top two causes of exploits were contract vulnerabilities and exit scams, which accounted for 56 and 50 incidents, respectively.
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