The crypto industry has surpassed more than $1.4 billion in losses this year due to 179 hacks and scams, according to the latest report from web3 bug bounty and security services platform Immunefi.

That comes despite a 56.6% month-over-month drop during October, with losses of $55.1 million compared to $126.9 million in September. The slowing down of monthly losses this year means that, though significant, 2024's figures now represent a 1% decrease year-over-year.

"In general, losses appear to be trending downward," Immunefi Head of Security Gonçalo Magalhães told The Block. "Projects are increasingly adopting robust security measures, including enhanced auditing processes, improved smart contract designs, the implementation of bug bounty programs, among others. They also have access to a larger pool of skilled security professionals. The maturity of the current security stack is far better than what we were seeing 2 or 3 years ago, making it more difficult for hackers to exploit vulnerabilities."

October’s losses stemmed from seven specific incidents, representing the second-lowest monthly loss year-to-date but a 114% increase compared to October 2023. Most of the losses came via two projects, a $50 million hack of DeFi protocol Radiant Capital and a $4.4 million exploit of Tapioca DAO.

P719, Morpho Labs, Ramses Exchange, HYDT and Fire made up the remainder of the DeFi losses, with no recorded CeFi incidents this month.

Hacks also continued to be the predominant cause of losses compared to fraud, accounting for 100% of October's numbers.

Monthly crypto losses year-to-date. Image: Immunefi.

BNB Chain was the most targeted network this month, accounting for 50% of October’s attacks, while Ethereum and Aribitrum accounted for 25% of the exploits each.

Earlier this month, Immunefi identified Ethereum as its whitehat hackers' blockchain of choice, with Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism and Solana also on the rise.

Immunefi has paid out more than $100 million in ethical hacker and researcher bounties to date. The payouts span three years and result from over 3,000 bug bounty reports, the largest of which was a $10 million award for a vulnerability discovered in Wormhole’s cross-chain protocol.

Immunefi claims to operate the largest blockchain security community with more than 45,000 researchers, saving over $25 billion in user funds across protocols like Polygon, Optimism, Chainlink, The Graph, Synthetix and MakerDAO (Sky) from being stolen.

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