The first quarter of 2023 marked a significant decline in major attacks and losses in the Web3 space. Beosin EagleEye, a security risk monitoring platform, reported that the total loss from 61 major attacks amounted to approximately $295 million, a 77% decrease compared to Q4 2022. This improvement indicates that the overall security of Web3 has substantially strengthened in Q1 2023.
Significantly, the last month experienced the highest frequency of attacks, contributing 79.7% of the overall losses in the first quarter. DeFi projects accounted for the majority of incidents and losses, with 42 attacks leading to $248 million in damages. Ethereum, the most affected blockchain, suffered from 80.8% of the total losses. Flashloan attacks caused the most significant financial losses, while contract vulnerability exploits were the most common attack type.
Notably, the recovery of stolen assets also improved in Q1 2023, with approximately $200 million being recovered, a rate surpassing any quarter in 2022. Among the recovered assets, the hacker fully returned the $197 million stolen from lending protocol Euler Finance.
Only 41% of the targeted projects had an audit performed prior to the attacks. The overall quality of audits in the Web3 market remains subpar, highlighting the importance of selecting a professional auditor to ensure a project’s security.
Rug pulls continued to be a concern in Q1 2023, with 41 major incidents involving a sum of approximately $20.34 million. Notably, 83% of these rug pulls occurred on the BNB Chain, which is favored by scammers due to its lower GAS fees, shorter block time intervals, and larger number of active users.
