The growing popularity of DeFi since 2019 has led to the fact that this growing market has become a target for hackers and scammers. According to the report of the Messari research company, since 2019 the DeFi protocol has lost almost $285 million due to hacks and other attacks using vulnerabilities. According to DappRadar, the amount of loss is about 0.65% of the total cost of funds blocked in DeFi on the basis of the Ethereum blockchain.
Almost half of the DeFi hacks described in the Messari doc were instant credit attacks, which is the most common vulnerability in DeFi. These attacks used defects at the cost of oracles. In 2020, the number of hacks in the crypto industry as a whole has decreased, but more than half of attacks have come by DeFi.
In 2021, two protocols Alpha Homora and Cream Finance fell victim to fraudsters, and in the first case, losses amounted to a record of $37.5 million. The case of Alpha Homora also questioned a review of the quality of audit of smart contacts, taking into account that the main audit companies that work with smart contracts Quantstamp and Peckshield checked the project codes.
DeFi hacks do not only happen to the Ethereum network, but to the Binance Smart Chain as well. Thus, based on BSC Uranium Finance, an automated market-maker platform has been robbed of $50 million. The malefactor used the errors in the smart-contract of the project and was able to withdraw the funds during the planned token migration event.