In the second quarter of 2026, the crypto industry faced a record number of attacks: analysts recorded 83 protocol breaches, the absolute maximum in the history of observations. The cumulative damage from the incidents amounted to $755.3 million, with KelpDAO (293 million) and Drift Protocol (280 million) being the biggest victims of hackers.

In the cross-bridge segment, damage totaled $351 million. Of this amount, 38% was an incident involving the LayerZero OFT bridge, which was linked to an attack on KelpDAO; 37% involved administrative access compromise and manipulation of token prices; and 5.66% involved the theft of private keys.

Despite a record number of attacks, this period was not the most costly in financial terms - the record cost of break-ins still holds fourth quarter 2020 with $3.56 billion in damage.

Product Director of CORE3 and CER live, Dmitry Tarasyuk in a comment Cointelegraph linked the increase in incidents with lower total damage to less liquidity in the ecosystem. He noted that TVL had fallen from $164 billion to about $73 billion, and pointed out the gap between the pace of development of protocols and the maturity of their risk-management systems. As an example, he cited projects that use the multi-signature "three out of six" but store three keys on one laptop.

Cyber security remains strained in other segments as well. In May, THORChain’s developers of the cross-border protocol were forced to suspend its work after a $10 million attack, and on June 8 hackers compromised the wallets of the Humanity Protocol project, stealing about $31 million.

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The material is prepared solely for informational purposes and does not constitute a financial advice or recommendation.