Cumulative losses from cryptocurrency hacks since the start of 2026 have reached $8.78 billion. This is a historic milestone: for the first time since 2020, the total damage from attacks has exceeded the estimated onchain revenue of the entire industry — projects' revenue from blockchain operations, which ARK Invest analysts estimated at $5.6 billion.
The bulk of the damage is concentrated in a single incident. Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols — lending and asset exchange services without intermediaries — lost 58% more funds in 2026 than in all of 2025. At the same time, the annual onchain revenue estimate turned out to be noticeably more modest than last year's result.
One hack changed the whole picture
Since 2017, cryptocurrency hacks have caused $26.9 billion in losses, while onchain projects earned $47 billion. For every dollar earned, 57 cents were stolen by attackers. The revenue statistics include the 27 largest projects along with the rest of the market participants.
The Binance hack on October 29 worth $6.36 billion accounted for about 72% of total losses in 2026. The attack is attributed to the North Korean hacker group TraderTraitor. Binance claims it has compensated about 98% of the stolen funds from its own reserves.
Excluding Binance, annual losses drop to $2.42 billion. This is below 2025, when losses reached $2.72 billion, even though there were more incidents — 342 versus 148.
DeFi losses are growing, revenues are falling
Excluding the Binance hack, the overall situation looks calmer, but the DeFi sector faced the opposite trend. Losses of decentralized protocols across 243 incidents reached $1.19 billion versus $757 million in 2025.
In April, the Solana (SOL)-based platform Drift lost $295 million. The liquid restaking protocol Kelp DAO was short $293 million in the same month. Both hacks were linked to North Korean hackers — they became part of a series of attacks on DeFi in the spring.
ARK's revenue forecast for 2026 is far below the $8.9 billion expected in 2025. Protocols direct part of their revenue to token buybacks, and as a result, most coins with reward payouts to holders outperformed bitcoin (BTC) in price dynamics in 2026.
In 2020, hack losses exceeded revenue for the last time: hackers stole $4 billion versus $1 billion in onchain revenue. The following year, revenue rose to $12.5 billion and, over 2021–2025, remained above cumulative hack losses. Both figures may still change: the revenue forecast is based on extrapolating three quarters, and the hack statistics only include data through November 11.
Cryptalist analysis: Losses exceeding onchain revenue is an alarming signal for institutional capital, as it undermines the sector's basic economics: security risks are growing faster than real revenue is generated. However, the concentration of 72% of losses in a single incident distorts the overall picture — without it, losses are declining year over year. The key factor for the market is not the size of one-off losses, but the ability of DeFi protocols to build sustainable protection against organized state-backed hacker groups.