Fears that artificial intelligence would unleash a catastrophic wave of decentralized finance breaches have not come to pass, according to Dragonfly managing partner Haseeb Qureshi. In his view, the much-discussed DeFi “hackpocalypse” has so far proved more alarmist than real, even as the number of incidents has climbed to a record level.
Qureshi pointed to a notable shift in the profile of attacks. The median hack size has dropped to below $500,000 this year, down from more than $2 million in 2025. He argued that this suggests attackers using AI are focusing on smaller protocols and abandoned projects, while larger DeFi platforms have improved their defenses against this kind of threat. He also said that, if outlier events such as the Bybit hack in February 2025 and the Drift Protocol and KelpDAO exploits in April 2026 are excluded, this year has still seen less value stolen per month than last year.
Industry data still shows major losses
The comments came after OpenZeppelin founder Manuel Aráoz said he considers “all of DeFi unsafe,” citing the expanding ability of AI coding agents to uncover smart contract weaknesses. However, broader industry figures that include centralized platforms, wallet compromises, phishing, and DeFi exploits present a more mixed picture. According to DefiLlama, April saw roughly $644 million stolen in crypto hacks, the highest monthly total in more than a year and the biggest since February 2025, when the $1.4 billion Bybit breach pushed losses to $1.46 billion.
Separate data from CertiK showed crypto hack losses fell 46.8% year on year to $1.32 billion in the first half of 2026. Even so, the security firm cautioned that lower headline losses do not necessarily mean the sector is safer. It noted that last year’s totals were distorted by the Bybit incident, the largest crypto hack on record. CertiK also said more than 70% of second-quarter losses came from the KelpDAO and Drift Protocol exploits, which were largely attributed to North Korean state-sponsored hackers. TRM Labs estimated in April that North Korean hackers have stolen more than $6 billion worth of crypto since 2017.
Source: cointelegraph.com
