Good news: According to a recent report from Immunefi, August saw a significant drop in cryptocurrency losses from hacks and scams. Total losses amounted to $15,082,000 across five incidents, marking the lowest monthly loss year-to-date and a 94.5% drop from July.

As Decrypt As reported at the time, cross-chain DeFi protocol Li.Fi lost about $11 million in a hack in July. Hackers reportedly stole more than twice as much cryptocurrency in the first half of 2024 – based on the U.S. dollar value of the coins – as they did in the first six months of 2023.

The two biggest incidents this month involved the Ronin Network, a gaming-focused blockchain that lost $12 million, and Nexera, a DeFi protocol that suffered a $1.5 million loss. Notably, the $12 million stolen from the Ronin Network was later recovered after white hat hackers who discovered and exploited the vulnerability returned the funds.

Despite the lower losses in August, the total for the current year 2024 is $1,210,741,330 in losses from hacking and rug pulls from 154 incidents, an increase of 15.5% over the same period in 2023.

“Most of the losses in 2024 are due to attacks on the CeFi infrastructure,” said Gonçalo Magalhães, head of security at Immunefi Decrypt“We have known for some time that infrastructure compromises tend to be the most devastating hacks in the cryptocurrency world.”

All hacks reported in August occurred in the DeFi sector; no losses were recorded in the CeFi sector.

“In DeFi, most losses are due to vulnerabilities in smart contracts, while in CeFi, attacks typically target exchange infrastructure and focus on private key exploitation,” Magalhães said.

Ethereum and BNB Chain were the only chains targeted by hackers in August.

“Ethereum and BNB Chain are consistently the most attacked chains due to the high value of funds locked in them,” he added. “Bad actors specifically target these chains because the potential reward is higher in the event of a successful attack.”

Edited by Stacy Elliott.