🤖 AI Didn't Eat DeFi — It Just Snacked on the Small Protocols

Fears that artificial intelligence would unleash a "hackpocalypse" on decentralized finance have not materialized, according to Dragonfly managing partner Haseeb Qureshi, who said that AI-enabled attackers are largely picking off "small protocols and abandonware" rather than top-tier platforms. The median size of DeFi hacks has dipped below $500,000 in 2026, down from more than $2 million in 2025, even as the number of incidents climbed to a record high, Qureshi noted. Excluding outlier months tied to the largest events — the $1.4 billion Bybit hack in February 2025 and the April 2026 exploits of Drift Protocol and KelpDAO — the average monthly value hacked this year is lower than in the previous year, he said.

Qureshi's remarks push back against warnings from OpenZeppelin founder Manuel Aráoz, who said he considers "all of DeFi unsafe," citing the growing ability of AI coding agents to find smart contract vulnerabilities. Broader industry data paint a more uneven picture. April 2026 crypto-related losses reached approximately $644 million, the highest monthly figure since the $1.46 billion lost in February 2025, when the Bybit breach alone accounted for $1.4 billion, according to DefiLlama.

Blockchain security firm CertiK reported that crypto hack losses fell 46.8% year-on-year to $1.32 billion in the first half of 2026, but cautioned that lower headline totals do not necessarily mean the industry is safer. CertiK told Cointelegraph that 2025's figures were inflated by the Bybit hack, the largest in crypto history. In the second quarter of 2026, more than 70% of losses came from the KelpDAO and Drift Protocol exploits, which were largely attributed to North Korean state-sponsored hackers.

TRM Labs estimated in April that North Korean hackers have stolen more than $6 billion worth of crypto since 2017, underscoring the persistent threat from state-backed actors even as overall losses decline.