Crypto security losses dropped to about $68 million in May, though the number of incidents remained almost unchanged from April.
Crypto losses cooled in May after April’s spike, but data shows the slowdown still wasn’t a clean reset for the market’s security picture.
Blockchain security firm CertiK said in an X post on Sunday, May 31, that confirmed crypto losses totaled about $68.3 million in May, with about $9.4 million in funds returned. Although the figure was far below April’s roughly $650 million loss, it was still above January’s level.
The data also showed 80 total incidents in May, barely below April’s 81 but far above January’s 42, while February and March each recorded 59.
So even though dollar losses cooled, attack frequency didn’t, as May’s total falling mostly because the month lacked an April-sized exploit rather than because attackers pulled back.
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Crypto Hack Losses Led By Bridges, DeFi
The largest May incident was the Verus-Ethereum bridge exploit, with about $11.5 million lost.
THORChain, a cross-chain liquidity protocol, followed with about $10.1 million, while TrustedVolumes, a 1inch Fusion market maker and resolver, lost about $6.6 million.
Code vulnerabilities were the biggest loss category in May, accounting for about $45.1 million. Wallet compromises caused about $13.8 million in losses, while validator compromises accounted for about $5.4 million. Phishing caused about $2.7 million in losses, the data shows.
By type, bridge incidents caused the largest losses at about $28.6 million, followed by DeFi at about $23.9 million, while memecoins, exchanges and unverified contracts accounted for much smaller totals.
For comparison, crypto users lost more than $300 million to hacks, scams and exploits in May 2025, according to CertiK data reported at the time, meaning this May’s roughly $68.3 million total was down by about 77% year over year.
But the drop looks less like a broad security improvement and more like the absence of a single large event, as May 2025 was heavily driven by the Cetus Protocol exploit while May 2026 still had 80 separate incidents.
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