Although the leading blockchain security firm SlowMist was established in 2018, it has been gathering statistical information about Web3 exploits dating back to 2012. In its Hacked archive, the cybersecurity team updates statistical information after new events cause financial damage to the crypto community.
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According to data provided by this platform, Web3 projects and crypto users have suffered from losses totaling $31,331,784,491.24 since 2012, caused by 1,343 hack incidents.
SlowMist reports that the Ethereum ecosystem witnessed the highest number of hacks during this period, amounting to 278. It is closely followed by the Binance Smart Chain (BSC), where 220 projects have fallen victim to hacks since 2012. The EOS blockchain, designed as a decentralized operating system for industrial-scale decentralized apps, has also faced a significant number of attacks, totaling 120 incidents.
Projects within the Ethereum ecosystem have suffered the most substantial financial losses, exceeding $3.302 billion over the years. The second-highest amount, surpassing $1.474 billion, was acquired by hackers compromising Web3 projects relying on the BSC network.
Interestingly, although SlowMist has identified only 17 hacks affecting the Polygon ecosystem, these incidents led to the theft of $178.32 million — over six times more than the losses experienced by the EOS ecosystem despite a higher number of hacks. Similarly, the 12 hacks impacting the Avalanche network resulted in a massive loss of over $133.194 million.
Furthermore, with only 19 reported exploits, projects using Solana lost more than $534 million.
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As per SlowMist’s statistics, there have been 136 cases of exploits targeting exchange platforms, which appear to be more susceptible to hacks compared to other Web3 projects, resulting in losses of nearly $11.5 billion since 2012. SlowMist also reports 107 security incidents leading to losses amounting to over $11.404 million.
SlowMist’s Hacked archive highlights the most prevalent types of security incidents, with exit scams identified as the most common form of exploit. This is followed by attacks exploiting contract vulnerabilities, flash loan attacks, Discord hacks, private key leakage, and other forms of scams.
SlowMist’s Hacked platform also provides summaries of security incidents. The most recent event reported at the time of this press release was the Stargate Snapshot incident detected yesterday.
"A Discord Mod on LayerZero has reported that a scammer who introduced a phishing link within a proposal vote on the Stargate Snapshot platform, enticing users to stake STG tokens," SlowMist reports. Shockingly, more than 1,000 users fell victim to the scam, resulting in a substantial loss of approximately $43,000.
To enhance navigation of the Hacked archive, SlowMist has implemented filtering features, allowing users to select incidents based on the affected project or ecosystem, as well as the exploits that occurred during a particular year.
