The crypto industry has set an anti-record for the number of hacks: a new trend toward small exploits
The second quarter of 2026 became the most "fruitful" for hacker attacks in the history of the crypto industry. Analysts recorded 83 incidents — an absolute record for the number of hacks in the entire history of observations. The total damage amounted to $755.3 million. However, interestingly, this figure is significantly lower than the peak values of previous years.
Record in number, but not in money
The largest attacks of the quarter were the hack of the KelpDAO protocol for $293 million and the Drift Protocol exploit for $280 million. Notably, the main blow fell on the cross-chain bridge segment, where losses reached $351 million. Of these, 38% were attributed to the incident with the LayerZero OFT bridge, which, according to my data, is directly related to the attack on KelpDAO. Another 37% of the damage was caused by compromised administrative access and token price manipulation. Private key theft, contrary to expectations, accounted for only 5.66% of total losses.
Despite the record number of hacks, in terms of damage volume, this period lags behind the fourth quarter of 2020, when losses amounted to $3.56 billion. This indicates a shift in attackers' tactics: instead of isolated but giant exploits, we are observing a constant stream of smaller attacks.
Why are there more hacks?
As I see from market analysis, the decline in total damage amid an increase in the number of attacks is not a coincidence. Overall liquidity in the ecosystem has decreased from $164 billion to approximately $73 billion. This means there are simply fewer "fat" targets for attackers. However, protocol vulnerabilities have not disappeared. Moreover, the gap between the pace of DeFi project development and the maturity of their security systems is only widening.
A telling example: some teams still use a "three out of six" multi-signature scheme but store three keys on a single laptop. This is not just negligence, but a systemic risk management problem in the industry.
Consequences and conclusions
The May hack of THORChain for $10 million and the compromise of Humanity Protocol wallets for $31 million are just the tip of the iceberg. After the attack, THORChain had to suspend trading and operations with liquidity pools. Such incidents undermine trust in cross-chain infrastructure, which is already under pressure.
My expert assessment: The trend towards "scattering" attacks is an alarming signal for the entire industry. While teams chase speed of launch and TVL, security remains the weak link. If there is no radical overhaul of approaches to auditing and key management in the coming quarters, we risk seeing a new record — not in the number of hacks, but in total damage, when attackers once again find large targets.