Defillama Confirms April 2026 as Crypto’s Most-Hacked Month With 30 Incidents

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Defillama confirmed April 2026 because the most-hacked month in crypto historical past, with 28-30 incidents totaling over $625M stolen. Drift Protocol misplaced $285M on April 1, and KelpDAO misplaced $293M on April 18, collectively accounting for 93% of April losses. DeFi analysts warn that Q2 2026 faces intensified scrutiny on bridges and social engineering as assault frequency hits almost one incident per day. April 2026 Crypto Hack Depend Doubles Historic Month-to-month Peak The file was not set by a single catastrophic occasion. Two giant assaults drove the majority of losses: Drift Protocol on Solana misplaced roughly $285 million on April 1 in a social-engineering assault linked to North Korea’s Lazarus Group, and KelpDAO misplaced roughly $293 million round April 18 by a Layerzero bridge message spoofing exploit. Collectively, the 2 incidents accounted for almost 93% of April’s complete losses.

<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-810683 size-full" title="Defillama Confirms April 2026 as Crypto's Most-Hacked Month With 30 Incidents" src="https://static.news.bitcoin.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/screenshot-2026-04-30-at-1-14-24-pm_nwmk.png" alt="Defillama Confirms April 2026 as Crypto's Most-Hacked Month With 30 Incidents" width="1394" height="978" srcset="https://static.news.bitcoin.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/screenshot-2026-04-30-at-1-14-24-pm_nwmk-300x210.png 300w, https://static.news.bitcoin.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/screenshot-2026-04-30-at-1-14-24-pm_nwmk-1024x718.png 1024w, https://static.news.bitcoin.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/screenshot-2026-04-30-at-1-14-24-pm_nwmk-768x539.png 768w, https://static.news.bitcoin.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/screenshot-2026-04-30-at-1-14-24-pm_nwmk.png 1394w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1394px) 100vw, 1394px"/> Picture supply: X. The remaining 26 or extra incidents had been principally beneath $5 million, and plenty of got here in beneath $1 million. The sample pointed to a broad assault floor hitting lending swimming pools, vaults, staking contracts, oracle configurations, and cross-chain bridges concurrently.

Defillama revealed a chart on April 30 exhibiting the month-to-month incident depend spiking to its highest degree because the platform started monitoring. Prior month-to-month peaks hardly ever exceeded 12 to fifteen incidents. April 2026 averaged shut to 1 assault per day.

Onchain researcher Stacy Muur additionally shared a working tally on April 29 on X, itemizing 24 confirmed hacks with losses exceeding $624 million and noting the month nonetheless had days remaining. Ultimate figures pushed the incident depend larger earlier than the month closed.

April’s greenback losses rank because the worst because the February 2025 Bybit breach, which totaled roughly $1.4 billion. By incident depend, nonetheless, April 2026 stands alone. 12 months-to-date by April, the business recorded roughly 68 incidents and greater than $1 billion stolen, already forward of 2025’s tempo excluding the Bybit occasion. April alone was 3.7 instances bigger than all of Q1 2026, which noticed roughly $165 million misplaced throughout 35 incidents.

Smaller April incidents included Rhea Finance at $18.4 million, Grinex at $15 million, Volo Vault at $3.5 million, Hyperbridge at $2.5 million, Sweat Basis at $3.5 million, and Wasabi Protocol at roughly $5 million on April 30. Dozens of further exploits ranged from $50,000 to $1.5 million.

Following the KelpDAO hack, experiences present greater than $14 billion in complete worth locked (TVL) leaving DeFi protocols inside days, with withdrawals concentrated in bridge and lending platforms.

Group response ranged from alarm to requires structural change. Safety researchers pointed to social engineering and access-control failures because the dominant vectors, shifting past the smart-contract bugs that outlined earlier years of DeFi exploits.

Requires multi-signature key administration, AI-assisted monitoring, protocol safety sprints, and user-level insurance coverage merchandise appeared throughout business boards and social media threads within the days following the assaults.

Defillama’s lifetime totals now present crypto hacks exceeding $16.5 billion, with DeFi-specific losses close to $7.7 billion and bridge exploits accounting for about $2.9 billion. Personal-key compromises and operational safety failures stay the most typical assault vectors throughout all classes.

Analysts warned that rising complete worth locked (TVL) throughout bull-market situations attracts a better quantity of refined attackers, creating stress on protocols to prioritize protection over new characteristic growth heading into Q2 2026. Moreover, advances in synthetic intelligence (AI) coding and cybersecurity have seemingly elevated these hacking incidents.

Investigations into a number of April incidents stay open. Defillama continues monitoring all confirmed exploits in actual time, with figures topic to revision as restoration efforts proceed and attribution is finalized.