April 2026: Crypto’s Worst Hack Month Ever – $625M Stolen in 30 Attacks!

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Defillama Confirms April 2026 as Crypto’s Most-Hacked Month With 30 Incidents

April 2026 saw a record number of hacks in the cryptocurrency world. Data from Defillama shows 28 to 30 separate security breaches, resulting in over $625 million in stolen funds.

Key Takeaways:

  • Defillama confirmed April 2026 as the most-hacked month in crypto history, with 28-30 incidents totaling over $625M stolen.
  • Drift Protocol lost $285M on April 1, and KelpDAO lost $293M on April 18, together accounting for 93% of April losses.
  • DeFi analysts warn that Q2 2026 faces intensified scrutiny on bridges and social engineering as attack frequency hits nearly one incident per day.

April 2026 Crypto Hack Count Doubles Historical Monthly Peak

The record was not set by a single catastrophic event. Two large attacks drove the bulk of losses: Drift Protocol on Solana lost approximately $285 million on April 1 in a social-engineering attack linked to North Korea’s Lazarus Group, and KelpDAO lost roughly $293 million around April 18 through a Layerzero bridge message spoofing exploit. Together, the two incidents accounted for nearly 93% of April’s total losses.

Image source: X.

The remaining 26 or more incidents were mostly below $5 million, and many came in under $1 million. The pattern pointed to a broad attack surface hitting lending pools, vaults, staking contracts, oracle configurations, and cross-chain bridges simultaneously.

Defillama published a chart on April 30 showing the monthly incident count spiking to its highest level since the platform began tracking. Prior monthly peaks rarely exceeded 12 to 15 incidents. April 2026 averaged close to one attack per day.

Onchain researcher Stacy Muur also shared a running tally on April 29 on X, listing 24 confirmed hacks with losses exceeding $624 million and noting the month still had days remaining. Final figures pushed the incident count higher before the month closed.

April saw significant dollar losses in the crypto industry, marking the worst month since the large $1.4 billion Bybit hack in February 2025. While the Bybit breach involved a larger total loss, April 2026 had the highest *number* of individual security incidents. So far this year, roughly 68 incidents have occurred, resulting in over $1 billion stolen – exceeding the total from the first four months of 2025 (excluding the Bybit hack). In fact, losses in April were 3.7 times greater than the combined losses for the entire first quarter of 2026, which totaled around $165 million across 35 incidents.

Smaller April incidents included Rhea Finance at $18.4 million, Grinex at $15 million, Volo Vault at $3.5 million, Hyperbridge at $2.5 million, Sweat Foundation at $3.5 million, and Wasabi Protocol at approximately $5 million on April 30. Dozens of additional exploits ranged from $50,000 to $1.5 million.

Following the KelpDAO hack, reports show more than $14 billion in total value locked (TVL) leaving DeFi protocols within days, with withdrawals concentrated in bridge and lending platforms.

Community reaction ranged from alarm to calls for structural change. Security researchers pointed to social engineering and access-control failures as the dominant vectors, moving beyond the smart-contract bugs that defined earlier years of DeFi exploits.

Calls for multi-signature key management, AI-assisted monitoring, protocol security sprints, and user-level insurance products appeared across industry forums and social media threads in the days following the attacks.

Defillama’s lifetime totals now show crypto hacks exceeding $16.5 billion, with DeFi-specific losses near $7.7 billion and bridge exploits accounting for approximately $2.9 billion. Private-key compromises and operational security failures remain the most common attack vectors across all categories.

Analysts warned that growing total value locked (TVL) during bull-market conditions attracts a higher volume of sophisticated attackers, creating pressure on protocols to prioritize defense over new feature development heading into Q2 2026. Additionally, advances in artificial intelligence (AI) coding and cybersecurity have seemingly increased these hacking incidents.

Investigations are still ongoing for several incidents that happened in April. Defillama is constantly monitoring and updating information about confirmed hacks, and the total amounts affected may change as funds are recovered and the responsible parties are identified.

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2026-04-30 23:29