TLDR
In May 2026, attackers hit 14 cross-chain bridges and stole about $340.7 million, underscoring that bridges remain one of the weakest links in crypto.
- Across 14 bridge-related incidents, about $340.7 million was stolen, with several mid-size exploits on Verus, THORChain, Gravity Bridge, and IoTeX.
- Bridge designs concentrate value and complexity, and some of the largest recent attacks, like the Kelp maker/">DAO bridge exploit, are linked to sophisticated North Korea aligned groups.
- Users and protocols can reduce exposure by limiting funds held in bridges, preferring more battle-tested routes, and watching for security and design changes from bridge teams.
Deep Dive
1. Scale Of The May Bridge Hacks
According to on-chain monitoring summarized by AMBCrypto, May 2026 saw 14 significant bridge exploits that drained about $340.7 million from cross-chain protocols, including the Verus-Ethereum bridge, THORChain, Gravity Bridge, and the IoTeX bridge, each losing millions of dollars to attackers.
This spike came after a relatively contained first quarter, where total bridge losses were around $169 million, taking year-to-date 2026 bridge-related theft close to $770 million by the end of May.
April was even worse at the broader DeFi level, with total exploited value over $600 million, showing that bridge and cross-chain infrastructure are major contributors to this damage profile.
bridge hacks are not isolated edge cases; they are now a recurring source of nine figure losses that can quickly hit multiple ecosystems at once.
2. Why Bridges Are So Fragile
The AMBCrypto report notes that bridges combine complex message passing, validator or relayer sets, and large asset pools in smart contracts, which expands the attack surface compared with single-chain apps that custody less value per contract.
Recent incidents illustrate the pattern. The Kelp DAO bridge exploit in April 2026, which drained about $292 million and is attributed to the TraderTraitor group within the Lazarus ecosystem, abused an off-chain infrastructure weakness rather than the core DeFi contracts, showing how attackers look beyond just Solidity bugs.
Because bridges connect separate trust domains, one weak validation or operational layer can compromise assets coming from multiple chains at once, making them high-value, high-leverage targets for advanced threat actors.
3. Risk Management And Next Steps
Analysts highlight that there is no single fix, but risk can be reduced by using more decentralized validation, stronger cryptographic verification, thorough auditing, and hard limits on how much value sits in any one bridge contract.
For users and treasuries, practical risk controls include keeping only necessary balances in bridges, preferring routes with public audits and long operating histories, and being wary when newer cross-chain protocols suddenly attract very high TVL without matching security maturity.
If more protocols adopt designs that minimize trust and split risk across multiple layers or providers, the impact of any single bridge exploit on the wider market could shrink over time.
you do not have to avoid bridges entirely, but treating them as high-risk infrastructure and sizing exposure accordingly is increasingly important.
Conclusion
Bridge hacks draining hundreds of millions of dollars across 14 protocols in a single month show that cross-chain connectivity, while essential for liquidity, remains a core systemic risk in crypto. The combination of concentrated value, complex off-chain components, and nation-state-level attackers means users and builders need to treat bridge risk as a primary design and portfolio concern, not a secondary detail, and watch closely for which projects are actually improving their security model versus simply rebranding the same risk.
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