As if the pessimism around crypto wasn’t enough, the industry has historically been hounded by hackers and scammers looking to make a quick buck. To make things worse, it appears tracing and recovering lost funds is now getting harder than ever as attackers use increasingly sophisticated methods.

According to a new report, only $4.9 million was recovered of the $204.3 million the industry lost to hacks, scams and rug pulls in Q2 2023, and that was significantly less than the $6.9 million recovered in Q2 2022. However, the good news is that losses in the second quarter were 55% narrower than in Q1 2023, when the industry lost a whopping $462.3 million to hacks and scams, with the Euler Finance flash loan attack accounting for 42.4% of the first quarter’s losses, REKT’s database showed.

The report, by web3 “super app” and antivirus solution De.Fi with supporting data from the REKT database, detailed that so far this year, the industry had recovered about $183 million, or nearly 28% of the $666.5 million lost to scams and hacks.

Image Credits: De.Fi, REKT

Q2 saw over 100 exploits

This quarter had 110 recorded cases of “scams, exploits or unintended losses,” the report stated. The three biggest cases were the Atomic Wallet breach at $35 million, Fintoch at $31.6 million for its alleged Ponzi scheme, and the exploit of a vulnerability in MEV Boost’s software that led it to lose $26.1 million. These three accounted for a combined $92.8 million, almost half of the total losses in the quarter.