According to Immunefi’s latest report, the third quarter recorded the highest loss of the year. Crypto users lost over $685 million to scams and hacks during that period. The figure shows a 58% increase compared to the third quarter of last year, when crypto investors lost $427 million.
Moreover, the blockchain security company’s report indicates that the funds lost were 55% and 158% higher than those lost in the first and second quarters, respectively.
The hacks in Multichain and Mixin Network accounted for $325 million of the stolen $685 million. Moreover, the notorious criminal group Lazarus claimed responsibility for $208 million, or about 30% of the stolen money.
The North Korean criminal organization is said to have masterminded the high-profile exploits on Stake, CoinsPaid, Alphapo, and CoinEx.
Meanwhile, Immunefi CEO Mitchell Amador has revealed that the recovery rate dropped by 8.5% in the third quarter. Only $60.8 million was recovered.
Decentralized Finance Projects are the “Prime Targets
According to Immunefi’s report, the decentralized finance sector saw the most attacks, representing 71% of the total loss. Exploits on centralized platforms like Alphapo and CoinEx represented 29% of the lost funds.
BNB Chain, Coinbase’s Base, and the Ethereum blockchain were targeted the most by attackers because the chains have been experiencing high network activity in recent months, and also their total value locked has grown.
Moreover, Immunefi says new chains were used by rogue developers in the third quarter to release scam tokens that left investors counting millions in losses. The blockchain security company notes that rug pulls rose to 74 in the last quarter from 63 in the previous quarter.
For starters, a rug pull happens when a Web3 developer lures investors to inject funds into their token’s liquidity pool, drains it and later abandons the project.
One of the rug pull incidents that happened in the third quarter involved the popular memecoin PEPE. In mid-August, on-chain observers noticed that the developers behind the project had transferred over 15 trillion PEPE tokens, estimated to be worth $16.5 million, to various exchanges like KuCoin, OKX, Binance, and Bybit, then cashed them out.
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