Crypto hackers snatch over $1B in 68 incidents this year

Crypto has always been a risky space in which to put one’s money, but the current rate of hacks has even multi-cycle veterans spooked.

In 2026 alone, a grand total of $1.08 billion has been stolen in at least 68 incidents.

Three major thefts account for the vast majority of the losses, two of which came in April. It’s been a particularly rough month with 30 incidents so far, an average of more than one a day.

Just this past week, Protos has identified 13 individual losses, including three on the same day this article was written. Although these were mostly for lower amounts, they totaled over $11 million of losses.

In an attempt to keep readers up to date (not to mention staying on top of it ourselves!) Protos has put together a catalogue of crypto hacks; entries cover 2026 so far, generally with a $100,000 loss cut-off.

Protos’ hack tracker can be found on the Live section of our website.

Security firms struggling to keep up with crypto hacks

Facing such an onslaught of hacks, even specialist crypto security firms seem unable to keep pace.

Team members from crypto projects Alchemix, Trading Strategy and Yearn Finance all scolded Peckshield on Wednesday for its “reckless” alerts, which implied their products were to blame for losses from insecure third-party contracts.

Even the experts aren’t exempt from falling victim to hackers. The business development manager of CertiK, a crypto audit firm whose reputation is already somewhat shaky, took to X to warn that his Telegram account had been hijacked by scammers to spread malware using “fake meeting links.”

More hacks or greater visibility?

The advent of widespread AI use is increasingly seen as a major factor in the recent perceived uptick of hacks, especially those targeting smaller and/or older contracts.

The near-constant stream of incidents may be down to a genuine uptick in activity or simply increased visibility.

As well as AI-powered tools being used to find and exploit vulnerabilities, they increase researchers’ ability to monitor and pluck out noteworthy transactions from the background noise of blockchain data.

Either way, it’s a significant amount of the overall DeFi sector, claims Pigi Finance.

It analyzed five years of hacks and estimates that 3.37% of DeFi assets are lost in protocol exploits, per year. This excludes “bridge hacks, CEX collapses, wallet drains [and] phishing,” focusing on “pure protocol-level risk.”

But as security standards harden, especially amongst projects holding significant funds, the focus for big paydays has moved elsewhere.

Neither of April’s two monster hacks, Drift Protocol’s $280 million and Kelp DAO’s $290 million losses, were smart contract exploits.

ImmuneFi’s Mitchell Amador, analyzing a similar timeframe, says “protocol security has improved dramatically.” Despite the number of loss events decreasing, both total losses and average loss per incident are down sharply from 2022 highs.

As the largest recent losses show, the juiciest crypto hack targets now involve long term social engineering and spear-phishing, with the ultimate aim to compromise privileged machines.