According to a report released on June 30 by Web3 security firm Beosin, the total value of cryptocurrencies lost in scams, hacks, and rug pulls reached $656 million in the first half of 2023.
This amount includes $471.43 million lost in 108 protocol attacks, $108 million in various phishing scams, and $75.87 million in 110 rug pulls.
Notably, this represents a significant decrease compared to the losses in the second half of 2022, where $1.91 billion and $1.69 billion were lost in hacks, respectively.
The report also highlighted that around $215 million of stolen assets were recovered, accounting for 45.5% of all stolen assets.
In contrast, only 8% of stolen assets were recovered in 2022. Additionally, $113 million of stolen assets were transferred to mixers, with $45.38 million going into Tornado Cash and $68.14 million into other mixers.
The majority of the crypto lost in the first half of 2023 were coins and tokens minted on the Ethereum blockchain, accounting for 75.6% of the total. Binance Smart Chain tokens, on the other hand, represented just 2.6% of the stolen assets.
Smart contract vulnerabilities were identified as the main cause of loss, responsible for 56% of the stolen crypto, while 21.4% had no clear identifiable reasons for the loss.
However, these figures indicate a significant decrease compared to the second half of 2021, when a record $2.1 billion was lost in crypto due to hacks, phishing scams, and rug pulls.
In the second quarter of 2023, over $208 million was exploited and hacked from decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, with only $4.5 million of funds recovered, resulting in total losses of over $204 million.
The DeFi ecosystem, despite its substantial daily trading volume, remains a niche industry accessible to a limited population within the crypto industry.
To gain a comprehensive understanding of DeFi, Cointelegraph Research has released a new report titled “Investing in DeFi: A Comprehensive Guide.”
Maple Finance, a web3 lending platform, has recently introduced a direct lending program to fill the void left by bankrupt major lending protocols like BlockFi.
This program aims to replace services previously provided by Celsius, BlockFi, and other now-defunct lenders.
Following the Bedrock upgrade, transactions on the Optimism network surged by 67%. The upgrade led to an increase in daily transactions from less than 300,000 to over 550,000.
Despite market drawdown, leading wallet service providers have added support for the BRC-20 token standard issued on the Bitcoin network, including BitKeep and OKX.
The overall DeFi market experienced a bullish surge after three bearish weeks, with most of the top 100 DeFi tokens trading in the green. However, the total value locked in DeFi protocols remained below $50 billion.
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