While 2021 was a profitable year for some cryptocurrency investors, it was a year for others to deal with hackers and fraudsters.
SlowMist’s annual report has 231 security events tracked on the blockchain. Losses from all these fraudulent events total $9.8 billion.
With more hacks and scams occurring in the DeFi industry nearly every day, the stated number could exceed $10 billion.
Among these 231 incidents, nearly 170 cases were attributed to decentralized applications or decentralized finance, including 15 exchange security breaches, public blockchain attacks, three wallet security issues, 35 hacks or fraud.
Large Blockchains and Exchanges
While most of the hacker victims are relatively small chains or projects, there are also some major security issues with the chain in 2021.
Even large networks like Ethereum Classic have fallen victim to a fork that was caused by a vulnerability in Ethereum’s Geth client code. Less than two weeks after the release of Ethereum Classic, the Solana network went offline for 17 hours due to a service attack. But luckily for its users, no money was stolen by the attackers.
As for decentralized and centralized exchanges, the two most notable attacks in 2021 were to Cryptopia and Liquid exchange hot wallet. A total of about $100 million worth of tokens were stolen due to the attacks.