Crypto losses to hacks and scams surpass $1.2 billion in 2024, despite dramatic August drop: Immunefi

The crypto industry has surpassed more than $1.2 billion in losses this year due to 154 hacks and scams — up 15.5% year-over-year — according to the latest report from web3 bug bounty and security services platform Immunefi.

That comes despite a dramatic 95% month-over-month drop during August when losses were only $15.1 million compared to $274.7 million in July.

August’s losses stemmed from five specific incidents, representing the lowest monthly loss year-to-date and a 38% decrease compared to August 2023. The majority of the losses came from one incident alone, a $12 million outflow to MEV bots from the Ronin Network bridge due to an upgrade bug on Aug. 6.

However, the outflow was later attributed to white hats, who returned the funds in exchange for a $500,000 bounty. Ronin's bridge with Ethereum was previously hacked for over $600 million in March 2022. An exploit of five validator keys lost 173,600 ETH (roughly $590 million at the time) and $25.5 million of the stablecoin USDC — the largest DeFi exploit in history. 

DeFi protocol Nexera incurred the second-largest loss in August, with $1.5 million stolen. VOW, Convergence Finance and iVest DAO made up the remainder of the losses, with no recorded CeFi incidents this month.

Hacks continued to be the predominant cause of losses compared to fraud, accounting for 100% of the losses in August.

Ethereum and BNB Chain most targeted

Ethereum and BNB Chain were the most targeted networks, accounting for all of this month’s losses. Ethereum suffered three individual attacks, with BNB Chain experiencing the other two incidents.

In June, Immunefi surpassed $100 million in ethical hacker and researcher payouts. The payouts span three years and result from over 3,000 bug bounty reports, the largest of which was a $10 million award for a vulnerability discovered in Wormhole’s cross-chain protocol.

Last month, Immunefi teamed up with the Ethereum Foundation to launch “Attackathon” — a large-scale collaborative audit contest for the Ethereum network.

Immunefi claims to operate the largest blockchain security community with more than 45,000 researchers, saving over $25 billion in user funds across protocols like Polygon, Optimism, Chainlink, The Graph, Synthetix and MakerDAO from being stolen.