Crypto industry reels as April sees highest number of hacks ever
April was a bad time for the crypto industry.
Over the past month, 29 crypto projects have suffered hacks or exploits, the highest monthly tally in the industry’s history, per DefiLlama data.
Among them were two standouts: The hacks of Solana-based exchange Drift, and Ethereum-based restaking app Kelp DAO, which resulted in a combined $579 million loss.
The situation has sparked a crisis of confidence among the industry’s most ardent believers and left them questioning whether the tradeoffs inherent in decentralised technology are worth the trouble.
In recent years, the number of crypto hacks — and the amounts stolen — have edged higher.
The fast-moving and experimental DeFi space, once notorious for exploits, was thought to have matured. But now it’s back in the limelight — and not for the right reasons.
“Right now, DeFi seems to be the primary target,” Michael Pearl, vice president of strategy at crypto security firm Cyvers, previously told DL News. “In general, everything has shifted now to hacking humans rather than hacking systems.”
Single points of failure
The problem, according to Michael Egorov, founder of DeFi protocols Curve Finance and Yield Basis, is centralisation.
“We need to reduce the number of single points of failure as much as possible,” Egorov said in a statement shared with DL News. “The goal of DeFi design should be to minimise human-centric points of failure, not add to them.”
The attacks on Drift and Kelp DAO both ultimately came down to…
This is the summary DL News publishes in its feed. The full article lives on their site.
