Blockchain security firm SlowMist is revealing that hundreds of exploits happened on decentralized networks last year resulting in billions of dollars in losses.
In its latest annual report, the security firm says that the crypto industry recorded losses of $3.77 billion in 303 incidents last year, a 61% decrease compared to the $9.79 billion in losses witnessed in 2021.
According to SlowMist, various blockchain sectors such as decentralized finance (DeFi), non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and cross-chain bridges took the brunt of the security breaches.
“There were a total of 255 security incidents affecting various ecosystems, including DeFi, cross-chain bridges, and NFTs. Additionally, there were 10 security incidents involving exchanges, 11 incidents involving public chains, 6 incidents involving wallets and 21 incidents of other types.”
The blockchain security firm also says that the BNB blockchain suffered the largest losses in the DeFi space in 2022 despite Ethereum’s (ETH) dominance of the sector.
“There were 183 major DeFi security incidents in 2022, resulting in losses of $2.075 billion, or approximately 55% of the total losses for the year.
Among these incidents, there were approximately 79 on BNB Chain, resulting in a total loss of around $785 million, making it the platform with the highest losses.
Ethereum had around 50 security incidents, resulting in a total loss of about $528 million, followed by Solana with about 11 incidents and a total loss of around $196 million.”
Security incidents in cross-chain bridges had losses of $1.21 billion last year, per the report.
In the NFT space, attackers employed various methods to steal assets including phishing, rug pulling and exploiting contract vulnerabilities, according to SlowMist. NFT security incidents resulted in losses of approximately $65.44 million in 2022.
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