$2.373B in Losses During Security Incidents 2025 Mid-Year

$2.373B in losses during security incidents 2025 mid-year across 121 cases in the Web3 space. 2024 mid-year showed twice as many of them but roughly half the total losses – 223 incidents with approximately $1.43B in damages. Let's take a closer look at the dynamics and scale of these Web3 security incidents, as the overall loss amount appears to be doubling year-over-year.

Fewer Incidents, Greater Losses – What Are the Dynamics of Recent Web3 Security Incidents?

It's only mid-2025, but the Web3 industry has already recorded $2.373B in losses as a result of various hacks and scams, according to the latest SlowMist report. As a reminder, when we summed up security incidents in 2024, comparable losses were only seen at the end of the year, namely, $2.3B. Moreover, this was exactly twice as much as in 2023, whose total losses amounted to ~$1.6B.

Another notable feature is that these doubled amounts resulted from half as many incidents. Specifically, 223 in mid-2024 versus 121 in mid-2025, which indicates an increased cost of security incidents in Web3. However, it’s impossible to ignore the elephant in the room, namely, the Bybit security incident. Yes, the platform itself wasn't breached and remains one of the most secure in the industry. Moreover, Bybit restored its reserves and even its liquidity at record speed.

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So, if we estimate and subtract $1.46B, the total losses will be roughly comparable to last year. But the incident did occur, and we are still seeing a doubling, even if it came from just one incident. Other interesting features lie in which ecosystems suffered the most losses.

• Ethereum. Despite active improvements in efficiency and security, its system lost incomparably more than the others, namely ~$38.59M.
• Solana. Here, the losses were much smaller, amounting to ~$5.8M.
• BSC. Comparable here, ~$5.49M.

In terms of solutions architecture, we also observe a dramatic difference.

• DeFi. Experienced 92 incidents, which is 76.03% of all cases, resulting in ~$470M in losses. For comparison, in the first half of 2024, there were 158 incidents and ~$659M in losses, indicating a 28.67% decrease in losses.
• CEX. There were significantly fewer here. Only 11 incidents, but the total damage was $1.883B.

And you know, I wouldn't categorize this as a defeat for DeFi. After all, many DeFi solutions don't have large teams capable of fully covering development, security, and other aspects. Meanwhile, I would place more responsibility on centralized projects. In most cases, their problem isn't resources but rather processes and security mechanisms, while many more regular users rely on them.

• Another interesting aspect is the key attack vectors.
• Account compromise – 42 incidents.
• Smart contract vulnerabilities – 35 incidents.

The prevalence of account compromise seems quite logical. One way or another, Web3 is accumulating experience and adopting all the best protocol design practices. Yes, gaps remain, as we can observe, but they are becoming more resilient and secure. Meanwhile, the human factor remains consistently vulnerable, and social engineering, supply chain compromise, or insider risks are becoming much simpler and faster entry points into systems and more frequent in practice.

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Okay, what about post-incident remediation? The data shows that AML mechanisms are mainly aimed at Tether and Circle addresses involved in the incidents.

• Tether (USDT-ERC20). 209 addresses frozen.
• Circle (USDC-ERC20). 44 addresses frozen.

In the first half of 2025, there were 9 cases in which stolen funds were partially or fully recovered, with total damages in those cases amounting to $1.73B. Of that, approximately $270M was returned or frozen, which is only 11.38% of the losses. And while that's not even a third, it's already a significant outcome.

Are Things Getting Worse? 

The data isn't encouraging, but not catastrophic. The losses are growing, but so is the size of recoveries. Incidents continue to happen, but they are increasingly shifting toward the human factor rather than technology vulnerabilities.

To me, this looks like the industry is maturing rapidly, with more liquidity coming in and, therefore, increasing risks. At the same time, engineering approaches and practices are improving and require corresponding improvements in human policies and security processes.

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