Over $3 Billion Stolen In Crypto Heists

In 2022, the Web3 industry suffered about $3.6 billion in losses from 167 major attacks, 47.4% more than a year earlier.

More than half of the total loss came from 12 cross-chain bridge incidents - $1.89 billion. DeFi-protocols were attacked 113 times (67.6% of the total number of hacks).

During the year, 20 public blockchains suffered serious security incidents. Ethereum, BNB Chain and Solana made up the top three in terms of losses. They also lead in the number of attacks, only Binance's network is in the lead.

Exploitation of vulnerabilities took the first place by both frequency and damage: $ 1.458 billion were lost due to 87 exploits.

Experts noted that protocols audited and unaudited were attacked to almost equal degrees - 51.5% and 48.5% of hacks, respectively.

Of the stolen funds, approximately $1.396 billion, or 38.7%, was transferred by attackers to mixing services.

Projects managed to recover only 8% of the funds stolen in 2022 - about $289 million.

Analysts estimated the global volume of criminal funds in the crypto industry at $13.76 billion last year. Attacks and exploits ranked second - money laundering schemes accounted for $7.33 billion. Financial pyramids accounted for $1 billion of damage, fraud - $830 million.

During the year, the experts have counted 243 cases of fraudulent rug-pull schemes worth $425 million. In about 86.4% of incidents, the damage didn't exceed $1 million.