Hackers log record 83 hits in Q2 2026, leave behind a measly $755.3M 🪤

The second quarter of 2026 has become the most-hacked quarter on record by incident count, with 83 exploits targeting cryptocurrency protocols, according to analysis by market insights platform Unfolded based on DefiLlama data. The $755.3 million stolen during the quarter so far is significantly lower than the $3.56 billion lost in the fourth quarter of 2020, which remains the costliest quarter on record for crypto hacks. KelpDAO's $293 million hack and Drift Protocol's $280 million exploit were the largest incidents of the quarter. The figures indicate that hacking activity is growing more frequent even as aggregate losses remain below prior record levels.

Cross-chain bridge exploits emerged as the leading attack vector of the quarter, with $351 million taken from bridges alone. The LayerZero OFT bridge exploit that led to the $293 million KelpDAO hack accounted for more than 38% of the value stolen during the quarter. Compromised admin attacks and fake token price manipulation accounted for 37% of losses, while private key compromises represented 5.66%.

Ethereum layer-2 blockchain Taiko was the latest network to suffer an exploit on one of its bridge protocols, with $1.7 million stolen through a compromise of Taiko's chain state verification mechanism. Other notable incidents of the past quarter include the $36 million taken from Humanity Protocol on June 8 and the $10.7 million exploit on THORChain on May 15. Additional recent events included two exploits on Aztec Connect's abandoned smart contracts, each resulting in $2.1 million stolen, and $1.3 million taken from decentralized exchange Raydium earlier in June. Quantstamp has tied the Humanity Protocol loss to suspected North Korean hackers.

The string of exploits has fueled debate over whether the development of new artificial intelligence models has reshaped the crypto industry's security landscape, a concern that surfaced following a series of exploits in April. During a recent interview, Mitchell Amador, CEO of bug bounty platform Immunefi, told Cointelegraph that the proliferation of new AI models has shifted the cybersecurity playing field in favor of attackers, causing a "vulnerability apocalypse" that he linked to the resurgence in exploits.