According to an analytical report by Chainalysis, scammers have stolen cryptocurrencies worth more than $3 billion this year. Over the past few years, this figure has increased several times from $1.5 billion in 2020 to $7.7 billion in 2021. Stolen funds are almost never recovered.
The main target of the attackers remains the DeFi sector due to the lack of a reliable security system for young projects. The most high-profile thefts of 2022 were the hacking of the Fantasy Finance smart contract worth more than $2.6 million in Ethereum, the attack on Ola Finance, as a result of which about $4.5 million was stolen. The biggest attack of the year was the hacking of the game Axie Infinity, in which more than $600 million in Ethereum and USDC was stolen.
The NFT sector is becoming an increasingly attractive target for attackers. In the first half of 2022, $84.5 million worth of NFT was stolen. A hacker attack on the Bored Ape server alone led to the theft of 2 NFT worth more than $65 thousand. Two hacks of the OpenSea NFT platform at the beginning of the year led to the theft of NFT totaling more than $2 million. The largest theft by the number of stolen NFTs was the hacking of the TreasureDAO marketplace protocol, as a result of which more than 100 NFTs worth $1.5 million were stolen and a hack of the configuration of the smart contract of the Audius online service worth more than $6 million.