In just the first few months of 2026, DeFi has struggled with hacks and exploits, including a loss topping $600 miillion in April. Estimates place the total pilfered at around $750–800 million, driven largely by two large incidents.
The largest DeFi exploit of 2026 was courtesy of Kelp Dao, where attackers exploited a vulnerability in the protocol’s LayerZero-powered cross-chain bridge, stealing almost $300 million.
In second place was Drift Protocol, attributed to the North Korean Lazarus Group. Apparently, hackers used social engineering to compromise admin keys, then used fake collateral and price manipulation to empty vaults.
There are others.
Nic Puckrin, a former Goldman Sachs quantitative analyst and now a macro analyst and co-founder of Coin Bureau, says these security failures are putting the DeFi ecosystem at risk.
“After a cluster of hacks and $9 billion of outflows, DeFi is facing another existential crisis. But this time, it’s competing directly with major institutions entering this space, and it has little to offer in return for the risk. With rates available on stablecoins barely above 5%, there are other ways for investors to eke out such returns without the risk of losing all of their funds,” Puckrin explains.
He posits that operators in the DeFi space are still acting as if it were a big tech experiment, but it is not. It is real money.
“The technology works and offers genuine benefits. What’s still broken is the security culture. Bridges have been notorious for hacks for years, yet they’re still being used as an exploit vector. At this point, it’s less about innovation and more about failure to prioritize basic safeguards,” he says.
Puckerin believes DeFi hacks and exploits are making institutions look at the tech as amateur operations, and this is a significant problem for an industry that wants to be taken seriously.
Puckrin admonishes DeFi participants:
“The window to fix DeFi’s image is closing quickly, and taking security seriously is where it starts. We’re no longer in testnet, and the traditional financial world doesn’t have the patience for incompetence.”