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Decentralised finance, or challenge, security platform and Immune bug bonus service.Fi issued an official report on Thursday that calculated the total volume of losses in cryptocurrency markets in 2021. According to the company's report, losses resulting from hacks, scams and other malicious activities have exceeded $10.2 billion in the last year.
Responsible for safeguarding over $100 billion in assets for a number of well-established challenge protocols, including synthetix, chainlink, sushiselk and pancakeswap, among others, immunefi has regularly facilitated 7-figure payments to whitehat hackers and other goodwill entities to prevent protocol compromises.
according to the report, across 2021 there were 120 instances of crypto exploits or fraudulent rug-pulls, the highest valued hack being poly network at $613 million, followed by venus and bitmart with $200 million and $150 million, respectively.
other notable entries to the list were alpha finance and cream finance who were both hacked for $37.5 million, yearn.finance’s $11 million, furucombo’s $14 million evil contract exploit, as well as the infamous alchemix reverse rug in which the platform’s users claimed a welcome fortune due of $6.5 million after a withdrawal issue arose with one of the platform’s smart contracts synthetic assets, aleth.
2021 saw a marked increase in the frequency and volume of security breaches from the previous year, when 123 incidents totaled $4.38 billion, an increase of 137% in percentage.
we've just released our report for 2021 on crypto losses stemming from hacks and scams.
in total, the defi ecosystem saw a loss of $10,210,188,549
read more facts and figures here:https://t.co/gcwioqjhhz pic.twitter.com/zex28yg0vd
— immunefi (@immunefi) january 7, 2022
Talking to cointelegraph, immunefi's president and founder, Mitchell Amador, talked about his optimism for the future of onchain's safety, despite what he called "a year of dramatic losses" to the industry.
“despite the appearance of entirely new vulnerabilities in the onchain economy, the community is adapting rapidly. at immunefi alone, we saved double the amount lost to exploitation this year, and security best practices are circulating throughout the community.”
Amador quoted Immune.fi’s role in facilitating polygon’s recent $3.47 million pay-out to two whitehat hackers for their instrumental role in averting what was described as “critical” vulnerability in the network’s proof-of-stake genesis contract placing almost all of the matic token supply of $10 billion at risk.
Related: Recounting the biggest challenge hacking incidents in 2021.
This past September, Immune.fi organized what was reported at the time as being the largest bounty in the history of defi to renowned white hat programmer alexander schlindwein for averting a potential $10-million bug crisis in automated market maker, or amm, protocol belt finance.
Schlindwein received compensation totaling $1.05 million, a million dollars was awarded by belt finance with immunefi as intermediary, and the remaining $50,000 from the number one BINANCE smart line priority program.
in october, immunefi announced a $5.5 million capital raise from a number of institutional investors, including blueprint forest, electric capital, with the intention of expanding its security services across the defi industry in a concerted effort to lower the prevalence and financial impact of benevolent security exploits in the space.
