Report: Crypto Hacks Rose 96% in March as Losses Hit $52M
A report from blockchain safety agency Peckshield exhibits that crypto hacks rose 96% in March 2026, with scammers stealing about $52 million in main incidents.
It added {that a} new development referred to as the “shadow contagion” can also be spreading the consequences of those assaults to different DeFi platforms, that means that protocols that aren’t affected need to take care of dangerous debt as a consequence.
Crypto Hacks Are Causing Ripple Effect
PeckShield identified 20 separate crypto exploits in March 2026, with the $52 million the business collectively misplaced in these incidents being nearly double the $26.5 million it says was stolen in February.
The platform added that these assaults are actually triggering what specialists name “shadow contagion” past the preliminary losses. Security researchers have famous that exploits are not behaving like remoted incidents. Instead, a single breach is making a ripple impact that destabilizes lending markets, drains liquidity swimming pools, and creates dangerous debt for protocols that weren’t immediately compromised.
In its X put up, PeckShield mentioned that March’s largest safety incident exhibits how this occurs. Last month, attackers hacked ResolvLabs by exploiting a vulnerability in its AWS key administration system that allow them mint 80 million USR tokens. The breach precipitated direct losses of round $25 million and triggered dangerous debt throughout a number of different protocols like Morphoblue, Euler, and Fluid.
In the identical method, a hacker bypassed the Thena (THE) market’s provide cap on Venus Protocol, inflated a collateral place to greater than thrice the meant restrict, and borrowed practically $15 million in property. While preliminary reviews framed the incident as a $3.7 million exploit, on-chain investigations present the attacker ended up losing over $4 million whereas creating $2.18 million in dangerous debt.
Other main exploits that occurred in the course of the interval embody assaults on people, with one, a $24 million heist of crypto belonging to on-line persona Sillytuna, involving bodily coercion and sensible contract manipulation, and one other, the theft of $18 million value of ETH from a whale on Kraken, because of social engineering. On-chain knowledge exhibits that the Kraken person had initially acquired 8,662 ETH, with the prison having access to their pockets and bridging $1.7 million value of ETH by means of Thorchain and placing a further 5,347.9 ETH into the HitBTC platform.
April Opens With $285 Million Loss
Elsewhere, knowledge from safety researcher Jussy shows further exploits of DeFi platforms like Cyrus Finance, which suffered a $5 million flashloan pool shares exploit on March 22, as properly as Solv, a reserve protocol on the Bitcoin community, which misplaced $2.7 million on March 5.
Meanwhile, April began on a disastrous footing when a scheme hatched in March resulted in the lack of about $285 million from Drift Protocol, a perpetual futures change on Solana. In the aftermath of the incident, blockchain investigator ZachXBT called out stablecoin issuer Circle over perceived inaction as the attacker bridged hundreds of thousands in USDC from Solana to Ethereum throughout what he claimed have been about 100 transactions.
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