Hackers siphoned a record $1.1 billion from cryptocurrency protocols in 212 onchain exploits during the first half of the year, according to a new report.
North Korea-linked groups account for $609 million or 55% of those losses, reports the blockchain security firm Blockaid.
Ethereum and Solana protocols suffered the heaviest network-level hits at approximately $332 million and $326 million respectively.
Major breaches hit KelpDAO for $292 million and Drift Protocol for $285 million, both tied to the same North Korea cluster.
The firm says the attack frequency climbs sharply from 18 in January to 57 in June, with April alone seeing $635 million stolen.
Zooming out, Blockaid verified more high-threshold exploits in this period than across all of 2025, signaling a sharp escalation in attacker scale and sophistication.
Operational security failures such as privileged key misuse drove roughly $790 million in damages, far outpacing code vulnerabilities.
Emerging risks include prompt injection attacks targeting AI agents and novel wallet delegation exploits that bypass traditional defenses.
Some vulnerabilities allow partial fund freezes or recoveries through code mechanisms, though outcomes vary widely across cases.
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