Cryptocurrency hacks rose 96% in March with losses reaching $52 million

March’s losses of $52 million were bad enough, but April opened with a single incident that resulted in $285 million being stolen.

A report from blockchain security firm Peckshield shows that cryptocurrency hacks rose 96% in March 2026, with fraudsters stealing about $52 million in major incidents.

She added that a new trend called “shadow contagion” is also spreading the effects of these attacks to other DeFi platforms, meaning that unaffected protocols will have to deal with bad debt as a result.

Cryptocurrency hacks cause a ripple effect

Peak Shield It has been identified 20 separate cryptocurrency exploits in March 2026, with the industry collectively losing $52 million in those incidents—almost double the $26.5 million it says was stolen in February.

The platform added that these attacks are now leading to what experts call “shadow infection” beyond the initial losses. Security researchers note that exploits no longer behave like isolated incidents. Instead, any single breach creates a ripple effect that destabilizes lending markets, drains liquidity pools, and creates bad debt for protocols that were not directly hacked.

In its post on X, PeckShield said the largest security incident in March shows how this happens. Last month, attackers compromised ResolvLabs with to exploit A vulnerability in their AWS key management system that allowed them to mint 80 million USR tokens. The hack caused direct losses of around $25 million and created bad debts across several other protocols such as Morphoblue, Euler, and Fluid.

In the same way, a hacker exceeded the maximum bid limit on the Thena (THE) market on the Venus Protocol, inflated the collateral position to more than three times the intended limit, and borrowed approximately $15 million in assets. While initial reports portrayed the incident as a $3.7 million exploit, on-chain investigations showed that the attacker ended up loss More than $4 million while creating $2.18 million in bad debt.

Other major exploits that occurred during this period include attacks on individuals, with $24 million worth of cryptocurrency belonging to online personality Sillytuna stolen. Involve Physical coercion, manipulation of smart contracts, and another, the theft of $18 million worth of Ethereum from a whale on Kraken, due to social engineering. On-chain data shows that a Kraken user did this initially acquired 8,662 ETH, with the criminal gaining access to his wallet and blocking $1.7 million worth of ETH through Thorchain and placing an additional 5,347.9 ETH into the HitBTC exchange.

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April begins with a loss of $285 million

And elsewhere, data from security researcher Jussy He appears Additional exploits included DeFi platforms such as Cyrus Finance, which suffered a $5 million flash loan equity exploit on March 22, as well as Solv, a reserve protocol on the Bitcoin network, which lost $2.7 million on March 5.

Meanwhile, April began in a disastrous situation when a scheme planned for March resulted in the loss of about $285 million from Drift Protocol, a permanent exchange for futures contracts on Solana. Following the incident, blockchain investigator ZachXBT said He called The stablecoin issuer circuit caused notable inaction as the attacker siphoned millions of USDC tokens from Solana to Ethereum via what he claimed were around 100 transactions.