The crypto sector had its most disastrous month in over a year, with over $400 million lost in April 2025 to exploits, frauds, and rug pulls — the worst since the notorious Bybit hack in mid-2024. The disturbing trend has revived concerns about the stability of decentralized systems, especially amid increased on-chain activity and token speculation.
Over $400 Million Lost to Scams and Exploits
A new analysis by blockchain security company PeckShield claims that bad actors stole $407.2 million overall in April. From March, this number shows a 100% rise and exceeds the losses from the months before it. Among the notable events are a $68 million hack aiming at a Layer-2 bridge protocol, many DeFi rug pulls totaling more than $10 million per, and advanced phishing efforts compromising wallet infrastructure.
Fascinatingly, fast community response, protocol freezes, and exchange intervention helped to effectively recover slightly under half of the stolen funds—about $125 million. Still, the damage had already been done: damaged investor confidence, precipitous market declines, and a fresh need for better security architecture.
Why April Was So Bad: Vulnerability Perfect Storm
Analysts point to low liquidity tokens targeted for pump-and-dump schemes, smart contract weaknesses, and rising social engineering techniques combined. Rising new token releases and meme coin trades provided the perfect habitat for fraud. Furthermore, the forthcoming Bitcoin halving in March has attracted fresh retail players back into the market, many of whom were unprepared for the associated hazards.
Another factor was social media. New investors find it more difficult to identify what is legitimate as Telegram groups and Discord servers have turned into centers for phishing links and false airdrop notifications.
Lessons From the Bybit Hack Still Not Learned
The crypto market has obviously not learned important lessons from past events, including the $290 million in damages last June resulting from a Bybit hack. Although several systems have since strengthened auditing procedures and bug bounty schemes, the ecosystem is still mostly reactive.
From Day 1, security professionals caution that security needs to become proactive and thoroughly ingrained. Enforcing stronger project screening criteria, raising community awareness, and pushing the usage of permissionless insurance systems will help prevent rug pulls and phishing scams.
What Next: An Appeal for Improved Risk Control
The April increase in attacks emphasizes the need for a coordinated industry reaction. Some suggested policies consist of:
- Required outside audits for newly launched DeFi initiatives
- Wallet-native warnings and fraud detection
- Better user knowledge about contract approvals and phishing.
- Cross-chain cooperation on known attacker wallet blacklisting
Although decentralization is something the sector values, security has to change at the same speed as invention. Without it, even the most exciting initiatives run the danger of collapsing under malevolent influence.