April 2026 Sets Record for Crypto Hacks with $629.69M Lost

April 2026 marked a record month for hacking incidents in the cryptocurrency realm, with between 28 and 30 breaches resulting in losses of $629.69 million, according to DefiLlama. The majority of the $614.17 million lost in DeFi protocols stemmed from two significant attacks: on April 1, the Drift Protocol on Solana suffered a $285 million loss attributed to North Korea's Lazarus Group, while KelpDAO experienced a $293 million loss on April 18 due to a message-spoofing exploit. This latter incident triggered a crisis, leading to $190 million borrowed in Ethereum, Aave's bad debt reaching between $123 and $230 million, and a $13 billion drop in DeFi TVL. By April 2026, North Korea was responsible for 75% of crypto hacking losses, totaling $577 million for the year. Additional smaller hacks included Rhea Finance, which lost $18.4 million. In response, over 14 organizations committed $300 million to a rescue fund.