In the second quarter of 2026, analysts recorded 83 hacks of crypto protocols, marking the highest number of incidents ever observed. The total damage amounted to $755.3 million.
Q2 2026 is already the most-hacked quarter on record, with ~70 hacks, 2X the record.
But the total amount hacked ($746M) is a fraction of the previous peaks. Rather than a few giga exploits, it’s been a constant stream of smaller attacks pic.twitter.com/wQjaIRlegJ
— unfolded. (@cryptounfolded) June 22, 2026
According to Unfolded and DeFiLlama, the largest attacks included the hack of KelpDAO for $293 million and the exploit of Drift Protocol for $280 million. In the cross-chain bridge segment, losses amounted to $351 million, with 38% attributed to the LayerZero OFT bridge incident linked to the KelpDAO attack. Another 37% was due to compromised admin access and token price manipulation. The theft of private keys accounted for a smaller share at 5.66%.
This period did not set a record for the cost of hacks. The fourth quarter of 2020 still holds the record with $3.56 billion in losses.
Dmitry Tarasyuk, Product Director at CORE3 and CER.live, told Cointelegraph that the increase in incidents with lower total damage is due to reduced liquidity in the ecosystem available for attacks. He noted that the TVL decreased from $164 billion to approximately $73 billion. He also highlighted the gap between the development pace of protocols and the maturity of their risk management systems, citing projects that use a “three out of six” multisig scheme but store three keys on a single laptop.
In May, THORChain developers confirmed a $10 million hack of their cross-chain protocol. Following the incident, the THORChain team suspended the protocol’s operations, including trading, liquidity pool activities, and other “sensitive” actions.
On June 8, unknown individuals compromised wallets associated with the Humanity Protocol project, resulting in an estimated $31 million loss.
