TLDR
Immunefis new research finds that tokens hit by major hacks usually suffer large, lasting price damage rather than quick recoveries.
- The study finds hacked tokens fall a median 61% over six months, and roughly 84% stay below their pre-hack price.
- On average, these tokens drop about 10% within two days of the exploit, with hacks costing around $24.5 million each and $11.9 billion total across 425 incidents.
- For holders, the key signals are treasury health, incident response, and knock-on DeFi links, because only a small minority of hacked projects ever regain market confidence.
Deep Dive
1. What 61% Drop Actually Means
Immunefis 2026 State of Onchain Security report, summarized by multiple outlets, looks at 425 publicly known hacks from 2021 to 2025.
It finds that tokens associated with hacked projects see a median price decline of around 61% over the following six months, and about 83.9% to 84% of them remain below their hack-day price at that point. That means only about 16% manage to trade above pre-hack levels in that window.
statistically, the base case after a serious hack is a deep and persistent drawdown, not a V-shaped rebound.
2. Short-Term Shock, Large Dollar Losses
The same dataset shows a sharp initial shock: tokens tied to exploited projects lose about 10% on average within two days of a hack, as reported from the Immunefi study.
Economically, the hacks are large events. Across 2021-2025, 425 hacks resulted in about $11.9 billion stolen, with 191 hacks in 2024-2025 alone accounting for roughly $4.67 billion and an average of about $24.5 million per incident. A small number of giant exploits account for most losses, which also magnifies the reputational hit on affected platforms.
3. Why Recovery Is Rare And What To Watch
Immunefi and coverage of its reports highlight several reasons recovery is rare:
- Trust is damaged. A serious security failure signals weaknesses in engineering, governance, or risk controls, which can permanently deter users and institutions.
- Treasuries shrink. Stolen funds often include project reserves, cutting runway for development, liquidity, and incentives.
- DeFi contagion. In composable systems, one hacked protocol can drag down others that depend on its tokens or collateral, as seen in cases where stablecoins or money markets were hit via upstream losses.
For crypto users evaluating a hacked token, useful lenses include: how quickly and transparently the team responds, whether they can cover losses from reserves or insurance, whether major partners stick around, and whether the protocol sits at the center of a fragile DeFi web.
post-hack rallies do occur, but they are statistical outliers; treating every hacked token as a buy the dip opportunity runs against the broad historical pattern Immunefi describes.
Conclusion
Immunefis analysis suggests that major hacks are usually a structural break in a projects trajectory, not a temporary setback. The typical path is a quick 10% hit, a median 61% drawdown over six months, and a low probability of fully reclaiming pre-hack prices. For anyone exposed to a hacked token, the rational focus is on security fixes, treasury strength, and ecosystem dependencies, because those are the factors that can turn a rare recovery case from an otherwise persistent impairment.
