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Hackers have stolen more than $17 billion from crypto users through private key compromises across 518 recorded incidents over the past decade. That figure comes from data platform DefiLlama, which published the breakdown on Tuesday.
Of those incidents, 22.3% involved private key theft through brute force methods. Another 18.2% were attributed to private key breaches through unknown techniques. Phishing attacks targeting multi-signature wallets accounted for 10% of the total.
The pattern shows that losses are increasingly tied to credential weaknesses rather than flaws in protocol code. Wallet security, signing infrastructure, and user behavior are all contributing to the problem. Smart contract audits alone are no longer enough to protect users, according to crypto trading firm GSR.
GSR published a report on Monday which found that DeFi protocols lost more than $600 million over the prior 60 days. The recent Kelp DAO exploit and an April 1 attack on Solana-based decentralized exchange Drift Protocol drove most of that total. GSR said attackers are shifting focus toward “operational security, signing infrastructure, developer tooling, and the humans behind them.”
The Kelp DAO incident has become the largest single crypto hack of 2026. An attacker drained roughly 116,500 restaked worth between $290 million and $293 million from Kelp DAO’s rsETH bridge on Saturday. The breach renewed scrutiny over cross-chain bridge architecture and verification design.
Web3 projects lost $482 million in the first quarter of 2026, according to cybersecurity firm Hacken. Phishing and socialengineering attacks drove $306 million of those losses. Hacken co-founder and CEO Dyma Budorin said malware advances and AI tools are making it easier to run wallet-draining attacks at scale.
“If people are getting these links, their wallets can be completely drained,” Budorin said in an interview at EthCC 2026. He said attackers on darknet platforms take a commission on drained funds and target whoever is easiest to compromise. GSR added that compressed DeFi yields are sharpening the risk calculus for depositors. “DeFi yields have compressed toward TradFi rates, raising the question of whether depositing on-chain is still worth the risk,” the firm wrote.
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Source: coinmarketcap.com