Crypto Theft Tops $1.2B in 2024, With Over $15M Lost in August Hacks

The crypto industry has suffered over $1.2 billion in losses this year due to 154 hacks and scams, reflecting a 15.5% increase compared to last year, according to a recent report by web3 bug bounty and security platform, Immunefi.

However, despite the annual rise, August saw a significant 95% drop in month-over-month losses, totaling only $15.1 million compared to July’s $274.7 million.

August’s Crypto Losses

August’s losses were the lowest recorded so far this year, with five incidents, a 38% decrease from August 2023. Most of these losses originated from a single incident on August 6, when a $12 million outflow to MEV bots occurred due to an upgrade bug on the Ronin Network bridge.

The Ronin bridge outflow was attributed to white-hat hackers, who returned the funds in exchange for a $500,000 bounty. It’s worth noting that Ronin’s bridge with Ethereum was previously exploited in March 2022, resulting in the loss of 173,600 ETH (approximately $590 million at the time) and $25.5 million in USDC, marking the largest DeFi exploit in history.

The DeFi protocol Nexera suffered the second-largest loss in August, with $1.5 million stolen. The remaining losses were attributed to VOW, Convergence Finance, and iVest DAO, with no incidents reported in the centralized finance (CeFi) sector this month.

Immunefi Expands Security Efforts

All losses in August were due to hacks, which accounted for 100% of the recorded incidents. Ethereum and BNB Chain were the most targeted networks, with Ethereum suffering three attacks and BNB Chain experiencing two.

In June, Immunefi crossed the $100 million mark in payouts to ethical hackers and researchers. These payouts span three years and are the result of over 3,000 bug bounty reports, including a $10 million award for discovering a vulnerability in Wormhole’s cross-chain protocol.

Recently, the security firm partnered with the Ethereum Foundation to launch “Attackathon,” a large-scale collaborative audit contest for the Ethereum network. Immunefi claims to manage the largest blockchain security community, with over 45,000 researchers who have helped save more than $25 billion in user funds across various protocols, including Polygon, Optimism, Chainlink, The Graph, Synthetix, and MakerDAO.