According to Beosin Alert's monitoring and warning data, in the first quarter of 2024, the Web3 field suffered a considerable blow, with total losses as high as US$778 million. This figure is not only an increase of approximately 126% from the same period last year, but also an increase of approximately 72% from the previous quarter. Among them, hacker attacks are particularly rampant, causing more losses than any previous quarter in 2023.
In detail, there were 39 major attacks, resulting in direct economic losses of approximately US$617 million. In addition, dishonest project parties caused approximately US$75.5 million in losses through so-called “rug pull” behavior (that is, suddenly abandoning the project and taking away investor funds). Phishing scams are also not to be underestimated, causing financial losses of approximately US$86.24 million.
Of all these misfortunes, February was particularly brutal, with losses of $422 million, the most costly month of the entire quarter. It is worth noting that the Web3 gaming platform topped the list of losses for the first time, with only six attacks causing losses of US$365 million, accounting for nearly 60% of all attack losses.
The Ethereum network is still the hardest-hit area, ranking first with 18 attacks and losses of $342 million, accounting for more than half (55.4%) of the total losses. Private key leaks occurred 13 times this quarter, causing losses of up to US$458 million, accounting for 74.3% of all attack losses, becoming the most common attack method.
Despite the heavy losses, according to monitoring by the Beosin KYT anti-money laundering analysis platform, most of the stolen assets have been frozen or recovered, of which approximately 49.2% of the stolen funds ($303 million) have been frozen, and 12.9% of the stolen funds have been frozen. The stolen funds (US$79.45 million) were successfully recovered. Another positive sign is that the proportion of project parties that have undergone security audits has increased, which shows that the Web3 community is gradually paying more attention to security.
