BanklessTimes CEO Jonathan Merry attributes hacker preference for the two chains to their popularity. He explained the two host most DeFi projects providing malicious actors with a huge volume of targetable funds. Besides, these DeFi protocols often have vulnerabilities in their smart contracts, increasing their susceptibility to attacks.
Merry concludes, “The findings bring under sharp scrutiny the capacity of different Web3 projects to safeguard investor funds. Despite advancements in the sector’s security standards, hackers and fraudsters continue finding loopholes that they exploit. Clearly, the sector needs to do more to contain these threats.”
A Positive Outlook
Despite the huge loss in funds, the data paints a positive picture of the Web3 ecosystem. Q3 2022’s figures indicate a 63% drop in the sector’s losses from the $1.15B it suffered in Q3 2021.
Hacks accounted for 93% of the lost funds, with fraud making up the remaining 7%. Hackers managed to make away with $398.9M from 30 different exploits. That’s a 67% decline from the sector’s losses to such acts in Q1 2022 ($1.22B).
DeFi Remains a Hacker’s Favorite
It’s been a tough quarter for Defi as it lost $423,423,783 across 36 incidents in Q3 2022. This is a significant decrease from the $670,608,280 in losses it suffered across 49 incidents in Q2, but it’s still a substantial number. The silver lining is that the number of Defi incidents has decreased by 36.8%.
