Global crypto market losses due to hacks and scams fell 36 per cent to $428 million in the third quarter (Q3) of 2022 from $670 million in the previous quarter, bug bounty platform Immunefi said in a report.
Fraud constituted seven per cent of the total losses, and hacks accounted for 93 per cent in the quarter. "The global Web3 space was valued at $3 trillion in 2021, and with billions locked across different smart contracts, this capital represents an unparalleled, attractive opportunity for blackhat hackers," it said.
Immunefi researchers estimated a loss of $399 million due to hacking across 30 “unique occurrences” and $29 million losses due to fraud across nine specific incidents.
The report added that "Most of that sum was lost by 2 specific projects, Nomad Bridge, a cross-chain communication standard that enables transfers of tokens and data between chains, and Wintermute, a global crypto market maker."
The study said that frauds accounted for $29,805,600 losses across nine specific incidents in Q3. The figure represents a 170.9 per cent increase compared to $11,000,000 in Q1 2022 and 838.9 per cent jump compared to Q2 2022, when the market lost $3,174,359 in various frauds. Decentralised finance (DeFi) was the main target for exploits compared to centralised finance (CeFi) in Q3 2022.
DeFi accounted for 98.8 per cent of the overall losses, while CeFi accounted for 1.2 per cent of the losses. BNB Chain and Ethereum were targeted the most in Q3 2022, the report said.
With 16 occurrences or 28.6 per cent of the losses across all targeted chains, BNB Chain had the most individual attacks, while Ethereum saw 13 instances, or 23.2 per cent.
The global crypto market has been trading in the red after the crypto taxation came into effect. Major crypto exchanges have witnessed a significant dent in their trading volumes.
For instance, WazirX and CoinDCX’s trading volumes dropped by 80 per cent. According to statistics obtained from data aggregator nomics.com, trade volumes of Indian cryptocurrency exchanges fell significantly after one per cent tax deducted at source or TDS came into effect from July 1, 2022.
