Aside from the bullish crypto market rally in January, there was more positive industry news as the month saw a decline in losses from exploitation compared to the same period last year.
According to data from blockchain security company PeckShield on January 31, there was a loss of $8.8 million from crypto exploits in January.
There were 24 exploits during the month, with $2.6 million worth of crypto sent to mixers such as Tornado Cash. Details of the assets sent to the mixer include 1,200 Ether (ETH) and around 2,668 BNB (BNB).
The January figure is 92.7% lower than the $121.4 million lost to exploitation in January 2022.
#PeckShieldAlert ~24 exploits earned $8.8M in January 2023.
As of January 31, 2023, the stolen funds were $2.6M (~2,668 $BNB & 1,200 $ETH) transferred to Mixer (TornadoCash, Fixedfloat, and sideshift[.]ai). pic.twitter.com/KlGmDmKFbI— PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert) January 31, 2023
PeckShield reported the largest exploit since last month, representing 68% of the total, which was carried out on the DeFi lending and lending platform LendHub which lost $6 million on January 12.
Other notable exploits of the month include Thoreum Finance which lost $580,000 and Midas Capital which was exploited for $650,000 in a loan lightning attack.
The January figure is also down 68% from December 2022 which is almost $27.3 million in exploitation losses, according to PeckShield.
Other losses not included in the data include a $2.6 million rug pull in BNB Chain’s FCS token, according to Rekt DeFiYield’s database. Another $150,000 was lost to fake BONK tokens, and $200,000 was stolen from the Doglands Metaverse gaming platform, DeFiYield reported.
A phishing attack on the GMX decentralized trading protocol on January 4 also caused victims to lose up to $4 million.
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Despite a relatively quiet month, blockchain security firm CertiK told Cointelegraph in early January that there is unlikely to be a slowdown in attacks and exploits this year.
The company also reported that the $62 million in crypto stolen in December was the “lowest monthly figure” in 2022.
At the end of last year, the ten biggest exploits of 2022 resulted in $2.1 billion stolen from crypto protocols.