The security services platform that offers protection against Web3 bugs – Immunefi – estimated that hackers and fraudsters have drained approximately $23.4 million worth of digital assets from crypto projects in August.
While the figure might sound significant, it is 92% less than the recorded losses in July when wrongdoers siphoned over $320 million.
As analyzed by the platform, the exact losses that crypto projects suffered due to such attacks in August are $23,366,220. Hacks accounted for almost 70% of the total sum ($15.8 million), and fraud made up an additional $7.5 million. Immunefi noted that DeFi organizations were the main target for bad actors last month, whereas CeFi “hasn’t witnessed a single major exploit.”
The blockchains that suffered the most individual attacks over the past 30 days are Ethereum, Base, and BNB Chain, representing around 62% of the total losses. Optimism was targeted twice, while Solana, Arbitrum, and Avalanche registered one incident each.
One of the largest single frauds occurred on Magnate Finance – a lending protocol on the recently launched Base blockchain.
As CryptoPotato reported last week, Magnate Finance pulled the rug just a few hours after the anonymous X (Twitter) user ZachXBT alerted the community about a possible fraud running on the platform. Magnate’s deployer was found to have a connection with two DeFi projects that turned out to be exit scams – Solfire and Kokomo Finance.
Further analysis determined that the wrongdoer later bridged approximately $1 million of the drained assets to the BNB Chain. Following the scam, Magnate Finance’s website went offline, while the team deleted the Telegram channel and the X account.
Apart from presenting the data for August, Immunefi outlined the dark stats in the past several months. It revealed that crypto hackers and fraudsters have stolen over $1.2 billion worth of digital assets since the beginning of the year across 211 specific events.
July was one of the most active periods for wrongdoers, embezzling almost $320.5 million (92% more than the losses registered last month).
Some of the notorious examples include the Multichain hack, the Curve Finance exploit, and the attack on crypto payments processor Alphapo.