Hackers were able to gain access to more than $320 million just in the first quarter of 2023, according to on-chain data consolidated by the quarterly report released by blockchain security firm CertiK.
The losses were significantly low when compared to 2022’s first and fourth quarters, where hackers were able to take around $1.3 billion and $950 million respectively. According to CertiK, the low amount of losses to hacks may be linked to the events happening off-chain that has an impact on the crypto industry as a whole. This includes the issues with Silvergate Bank and the de-pegging of USD Coin (USDC) at the height of the Silicon Valley Bank collapse.
Out of the stolen funds within the quarter, over $31 million were lost to 90 exit scam incidents while more than $222 million were lost in 52 flash loan and oracle manipulation exploits. In terms of incidents and the amount lost per blockchain, CertiK highlighted that BNB Chain had 139 incidents, which is the most number of incidents in the quarter. Meanwhile, despite having fewer incidents, Ethereum had $221 million in losses, the most amount lost in the first quarter of 2023.
Despite being a lot lower than last year’s Q1 and Q4, the first quarter of 2023 was still met with hundreds of millions lost, with 60% coming from the recent Euler Finance hack. On March 13, the protocol was hacked through a flash loan exploit, leading to losses of over $195 million.
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While the number of hacked funds looks enormous at a glance, a huge chunk of the funds lost to hacks was recovered through negotiations with hackers. On April 4, Euler Finance announced that they were able to recover around 90% of the lost funds after almost a month of back-and-forth negotiations with the hacker.
This trend has been witnessed in the space more frequently with other hacks following Euler’s example. On April 6, lending protocol Sentiment also recovered around $870,000 after giving a bounty of $95,000 to the ones responsible for taking almost a million dollars from the platform.
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