DeFi Remains The Target: Hackers Stole Over $20 Million In February

Following several reports of hacks in the decentralized finance (DeFi) space last year, DeFi still seems to remain the main target for bad actors in the industry. According to data from DefiLlama, millions of dollars have been siphoned from the DeFi market since the beginning of 2023.

Despite the year just starting, a total of more than $20 million has been stolen from several DeFi platforms in the market, with January seeing $740,000 stolen and February having the highest amount stolen so far of nearly $21 million.

Over $20 million was stolen in February 2023. | Source: DefiLlama

DeFi Remains The Target

With DeFi being the most preyed on by hackers among different sectors in the crypto industry, platforms such as dForce network, Platypus Finance, Orion, and Dexible have been impacted by the hacks that have taken place so far this year, with each of them carrying larger value of hacks.

According to DefiLlama, Platypus Fianance carries the largest value of hack in February with a total amount of $8.5 million lost from the protocol. dForce network comes second with a $3.65 million total amount lost.

Orion comes third with $3 million lost, and Dexible, Hope Finance, and arbiswap lost $2 million, $1.86 million, and $0.1 million, respectively.

Besides these platforms, most of the attacks that have occurred so far this year have to do with protocol logic with only a few having classified under rug pulls and smart contract language.

Protocol logic is basically a standardized code used to create smart contracts and several decentralized applications that may have been tampered with by hackers to steal funds.

Overall, flash loan attacks emerged as the most dominant among the list of hacks. The majority of hacks in recent weeks are found under this technique, according to DeFiLlama. This has shown that the service is a major pain point for the DeFi market as a whole.

Furthermore, with bad actors’ continuous new methods of exploiting the DeFi market, the assurance of whether DeFi attacks will likely decrease or stop someday is a tough nut to crack as hackers have also begun to expand to other popular sectors in the industry such as the non-fungible token (NFT) ecosystem.

Hackers Begin To Target The NFT Market

Just as DeFi hacks initially began back in the day, NFT-related hacks are also beginning to increase with each passing day. Given the industry’s infant stage and a lot of new entrants found in the space, bad actors have seen that as an advantage and have seemed to be keen on exploiting that advantage.

Just this year alone, hackers have exploited millions from the NFT ecosystem with an individual with the pseudonym Loyalist stealing millions of dollars worth of NFTs including Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFTs via the use of phishing scams on the crypto community’s favorite social platform, Twitter.

Fortune’s recent report last August revealed more than $100 million in NFTs have been stolen between the middle of 2021 to late 2022. Part of these hacks included the one involving the popularly known NFT project Azuki.

To conclude, while the DeFi and NFT market has been a major target for bad actors, the crypto market has always been an involvement as it’s where the selling off of the assets takes place.

At the time of writing, the crypto market is in a bearish trend following several negative news including that of the Silvergate fallout.

The total cryptocurrency market cap price is moving sideways on the 1-day chart. Source: Crypto TOTAL Market Cap on TradingView.com

The global cryptocurrency market capitalization is currently down $3.2% in the last 24 hours with larger assets such as Bitcoin and Ethereum recording sharp declines over the same period.

Featured image from Shutterstock, Chart from TradingView