Grand theft DeFi. Blockchain analytics company Ciphertrace has revealed that crypto related crimes have moved to the realm of decentralized finance apps and protocols.
DeFi is now the new ground for cybercriminals.
The information comes from the company’s latest report that is titled “Cryptocurrency Crime and Anti-Money Laundering Report”, which examines data from the first four months of the year and exposes a picture of how crypto related crimes have evolved compared to last year.
Interestingly, the impact of these hacks and exploits is way bigger than the one of classic hacks and centralized exchanges and other scams.
The company found out that on the whole cryptocurrency sector has become a lot more secure, with only $432 million being stolen as a result of the illegal activities in the space. This project is, in fact, way lower than $1.9 billion Ciphertrace found were taken during 2020.
In contrast, these attacks are now pivoting to a new sector that is easier to tackle.
And that is, decentralized finance.
The scams and exploits in the DeFi sector pulled $156 million in the period studied by the report, already surpassing the number that was taken in 2020. And as you would expect, this increase is related to the rise of the decentralized finance field as a whole, which now accounts for a third of all Ethereum activity.
Ciphertrace has also provided a list of the biggest scams and exploits that happened in this period.
The biggest DeFi related scam was the exploit of PAID network that allowed hackers to mint $150 million worth of the currency. Likewise, EasyFi lost $80 million due to a security vulnerability that allowed hackers to steal the private keys of the wallet from the computer of a member of its own team.
Goes without saying that these hacks and exploits will likely keep happening at an even higher scale, with the DeFi sector acquiring more and more relevance in the crypto space.
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