Crypto industry lost over $600M to hacks in April
In April, the crypto industry saw a sharp surge in hacking incidents. According to DeFiLlama, hackers have already stolen around $629.7 million since the start of the month — the worst figure in more than a year.
As reported by Cointelegraph, the biggest losses came from the DeFi sector. The two largest incidents — the $293 million KelpDAO hack and the $280 million Drift Protocol exploit — accounted for roughly 82% of all April losses.
One of the recent cases involved Wasabi Protocol. According to CertiK, the DeFi derivatives platform lost about $5.5 million in an ongoing exploit across Ethereum, Base, Blast, and Berachain networks.
Another incident hit the move-to-earn platform Sweat Economy. The project reportedly lost $3.46 million — about 65% of its liquidity pool — in under 30 seconds. The team later said the stolen funds were frozen on MEXC, with recovery efforts ongoing.
Aftermath Finance, a decentralized trading platform on the Sui blockchain, was also affected. According to Blockaid, the attacker withdrew around $1.1 million in USDC through 11 transactions in about 36 minutes.
How hackers operate
Experts say the nature of attacks is changing. According to Chainalysis security solutions head Yaniv Nissenboim, hackers are increasingly targeting off-chain infrastructure rather than smart contracts themselves. This includes compromised RPC nodes, cloud-based key management systems, and long-running social engineering campaigns.
As a result, on-chain transactions may appear legitimate even when access layers or infrastructure are already compromised. This makes real-time monitoring and automated safeguards critical for DeFi. In the KelpDAO case, for example, rapid response helped prevent a second theft of around $95 million.
At the same time, Standard Chartered believes such incidents do not signal the collapse of DeFi. Analysts led by Geoffrey Kendrick say the sector is maturing and gradually implementing solutions to reduce vulnerabilities. In their view, DeFi growth can continue despite major hacks.
Deepfake arsenal
Hackers are increasingly using artificial intelligence in their attacks. This includes not only finding vulnerabilities but also creating deepfakes — fake voices and videos that can bypass security systems. For example, attackers can mimic the voice of a company executive or a support employee to gain access to accounts or internal systems.
These attacks are harder to detect because they are not directly tied to smart contracts or code. The main risk is shifting toward human factors and external infrastructure. This means that even technically secure protocols remain vulnerable if they do not implement additional layers of protection, from identity verification to real-time monitoring of suspicious activity.
It is also worth noting that the Upbit hack led to a sharp rise in Solana token prices in South Korea.
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