Digital assets may be firmly in the mainstream, with institutional involvement and a crypto-friendly president in the White House. 

But hackers and fraudsters are having a field day so far this year.

Crypto users have lost over $1.7 billion to these groups—already 14% more than 2024’s total losses of $1.49 billion, according to blockchain security firm Immunefi.

In the same period last year, losses totaled $420 million, the firm said. 

The report comes amid ongoing concerns about the vulnerability of DeFi networks and crypto more widely. The year-to-date total is heavily skewed by the $1.4 billion theft of Ethereum and Ethereum-related assets from crypto exchange Bybit, the largest hack in the crypto industry’s history. 

Yet the DeFi space has been particularly hard-hit more recently. In April, hackers stole $92.4 million from the decentralized networks in 15 separate incidents, Immunefi said. 

Decentralized finance—or DeFi—aim to automate traditional financial services like banking or lending. But DeFi apps are experimental and new, and are notoriously prone to being targeted by criminals. 

Earlier this month, hackers hit open-source DeFi platform UPCX with an attack, making away with $70 million in digital tokens. Two weeks later, hackers stole $7.5 million from KiloEx, a decentralized exchange for trading perpetual futures.

Immunefi founder and CEO Mitchell Amador told Decrypt that while “DeFi still operates in one of the most adversarial environments in software,” the space was getting more secure for the pros. 

“Generally, when it comes to established projects, we could argue that DeFi is getting safer,” he said. “The maturity of the current security stack is far better than what we were seeing two or three years ago, making it more difficult for hackers to exploit vulnerabilities.” 

Immunefi’s report added that in April, Ethereum and BNB Chain were the most targeted chains, representing 60% of the total losses across all blockchains. 

Edited by James Rubin