The cryptocurrency sector in 2024 has faced significant losses, exceeding those of the previous year. Centralized and decentralized financial platforms have both played crucial roles.

Centralized Finance (CeFi) Incidents

Centralized exchanges have seen a dramatic rise in hacking incidents, with nearly a 1,000% year-on-year increase. Q2 2024 notable breaches occurred at Japanese exchange DMM Bitcoin and Turkish exchange BtcTurk, losing $305 million and $55 million respectively. In total, centralized platforms accounted for $401 million in losses across five major incidents in Q2.

Decentralized Finance (DeFi) Trends

Despite the overall increase in crypto losses, DeFi platforms showed some resilience, with losses decreasing by 25% year-on-year in Q2 2024. However, DeFi still faced significant challenges, losing $171.3 million across 62 incidents. Ethereum and BNB Chain were the primary targets for these exploits.

Vulnerability Breakdown

From January to September 2024, there were a total of 131 reported incidents, representing a 197% increase compared to the same timeframe in 2023. This includes 79 smart contract exploits and 51 access control violations. Access control vulnerabilities surged to $1.62 billion, a 99% increase from the previous year, while losses from smart contract vulnerabilities decreased by 19%, totaling $380.4 million this year.

Faced with ever-growing losses and attacks, the cryptocurrency industry sees the critical need to strengthen security protocols and adopt real-time threat detection technologies.