Crypto protocols lost over $606 million due to attacks in just the first 18 days of April 2026. This makes it the worst month for hacking losses since February 2025.
The majority of the losses came from two attacks on KelpDAO and Drift Protocol. These two accounted for 95% of the total losses in April and 75% of the total losses in 2026, totaling $771.8 million.
Crypto hacking losses in April 2026 far exceeded the total losses in the first quarter.
According to data from defillama, April alone recorded losses of $606.2 million across 12 incidents, surpassing the total of $165.5 million for the entire first quarter. This means April alone was approximately 3.7 times the combined total of January, February, and March.
Follow us on X for the latest news updates.
| Month | Number of hacking incidents | Amount of money lost |
| January | 12 | $100.1 million |
| February | 8 | $24.2 million |
| March | 15 | $41.3 million |
| April (as of April 18th) | 12 | $606.2 million |
| Total cumulative from the beginning of the year | 47 | 771.8 million USD |
According to defillama, all months after February 2025 recorded losses below $240 million. However, the large figure in February of the previous year was mainly due to the Bybit hack worth $1.4 billion, pushing the total losses for February 2025 to $1.466 billion.
The losses in April 2026 occurred despite the absence of any major exchange hacks. This suggests that hackers have quickly shifted their focus to attacking DeFi platforms.
BeInCrypto reported that KelpDAO lost over $290 million on April 18th, making it the biggest hack of the year. Drift Protocol also suffered losses shortly afterward, amounting to $285 million .
The chain of losses has continued to escalate in recent days as Vercel , Hyperbridge , Grinex Exchange , and Rhea Finance have all been repeatedly attacked throughout 2026.
“These figures don’t fully reflect the ripple effects on TVL value, user confidence, valuation, and market sentiment. DeFi will remain a niche market until the risks are properly priced; we’re still a long way from that,” one analyst commented .
TVL DeFi value plummets due to uncertainty.
The Total Value Locked on DeFi platforms decreased by more than 7% in the last 24 hours following the Kelp incident. AAVE alone saw its value drop from $26.4 billion to approximately $17.9 billion.
"Almost every protocol is affected right now," analyst Ted Pillows Chia .
The frequency of hacks is also increasing rapidly. DeFi has recorded 47 incidents in just the first 4.5 months of 2026, compared to only 28 in the same period of 2025. This represents an increase of approximately 68% year-on-year.
Recent reactions highlight growing concerns that risk assessment in DeFi hasn't kept pace with infrastructure vulnerabilities. While the amount lost is still lower than Bybit 's peak in 2025, the number of incidents is steadily increasing. The next few weeks will determine whether DeFi can tighten security to prevent the negative trends of April from becoming a defining moment for the entire year.
