DeFi Hacks Decline to 168.6M in Q1 2026

Hackers stole more than 168.6 million in cryptocurrency from 34 decentralized finance protocols during the first quarter of 2026, a sharp decline from the 1.58 billion lost in the same period of 2025, according to data compiled by blockchain security firm DefiLlama. The drop reflects a quieter start to the year overall, though activity spiked in March, when losses reached 52 million across 20 incidents, nearly doubling the 26.5 million recorded the previous month.

The largest exploit of the quarter struck Step Finance in January, where a private key compromise allowed thieves to drain 40 million. That was followed by a smart contract manipulation on Truebit on January 8, which siphoned 26.4 million in ether. March's most significant breach targeted Resolv Labs, a stablecoin issuer, on March 21. Attackers compromised the project's AWS Key Management Service, enabling them to mint 80 million unbacked USR tokens and extract approximately 25 million to 26.8 million in value. The resulting depeg crashed USR's value from $1 to about 3 cents, leaving the protocol's collateral intact but triggering widespread fallout.

This incident exemplified a growing concern known as "shadow...