April crypto hacks soar 1,140% to $647M

TLDR

April was one of the worst months on record for crypto security, with losses from hacks jumping more than tenfold to roughly 630650 million dollars.

1. Security firm PeckShield reports about 647 million dollars lost in April across 40 exploits, a 1,140 percent jump from roughly 52 million dollars in March.
2. A handful of giant DeFi hacks, especially on Drift Protocol and KelpDAO bridges, plus attacks tied to North Koreas Lazarus Group, drove most of the damage.
3. The spike highlights that operational security, admin keys, and cross chain bridges are now major weak points, so DeFi risk is shifting more to infrastructure than core chains like Bitcoin or Ethereum.

Deep Dive

1. Scale Of April Losses

According to blockchain security firm PeckShield, April saw around 647 million dollars stolen across 40 major exploits, up 1,140 percent from roughly 52.25 million dollars in March PeckShield data.

Other tracking firms like DeFiLlama and CertiK report very similar totals in the 630651 million dollar range, making April the worst month for hack losses since early 2025 and one of the highest on record.

DefiLlama also flags April 2026 as the most hacked month in crypto history by number of incidents, with roughly 2830 separate attacks, close to one per day incident count overview.

2. Main Drivers And Tactics

The month was dominated by two mega DeFi incidents. Drift Protocol lost about 285 million dollars on 1 April and KelpDAO lost roughly 292293 million dollars via its LayerZero bridge on 1819 April, together accounting for over 90 percent of Aprils losses in some datasets large exploit breakdown.

These attacks were not simple code bugs. Investigations describe months of social engineering, compromised contributor accounts, and exploitation of weak admin key and bridge verifier setups, rather than a single faulty smart contract Drift and Kelp details.

TRM Labs estimates that North Korean state backed groups such as Lazarus were responsible for around 7576 percent of value stolen in 2026 through April, largely via the Drift and KelpDAO hacks Lazarus share of losses.

3. Impact And What To Watch

The immediate impact was a sharp loss of confidence in DeFi: after the KelpDAO incident, more than 1014 billion dollars reportedly exited connected protocols and lending platforms, even though base chains like Ethereum and Solana were not compromised at the protocol level TVL outflows summary.

Security firms and analysts are pushing for defense in depth, including multi signature control of admin keys, multi verifier bridge designs, stricter access management, and real time monitoring, since audits alone did not prevent these attacks security lessons.

Conclusion

Aprils 1,140 percent jump in hacked funds came less from many small failures and more from a few very large, sophisticated DeFi attacks exploiting human and infrastructure weaknesses.

For crypto users, the takeaway is that chain level security can remain intact while app level and bridge risk spikes, so venue and protocol choice are now a core part of managing exposure.