The 10 largest crypto hacks drained a combined $5.68 billion from the industry, but a structural defense proposed by a DeFiLlama developer would only apply to one of them.
The data places the $285 million Drift Protocol exploit alongside legacy disasters like Mt. Gox and FTX. The list has reignited debate over whether the security of decentralized finance (DeFi) is improving fast enough.
Lending Protocols Face Higher Risk
A DeFiLlama developer proposed combining tranches across protocols with 24-hour withdrawal rate limits. The idea divides depositors’ capital into senior and junior tranches, then caps daily withdrawals at the size of the junior tranche.
According to developer data, 3.92% of lending protocols with a maximum total value locked above $50 million were leaked by more than 80%.
This rate is 4.6 times higher than the 0.85% observed in all protocol categories. Slicing across protocols could reduce the probability of total loss for senior depositors by around 80%, the developer estimated.
Recently there has been a trend to add tranches to lending protocols, but if they are hacked forever, it’s tvl, like drift, it’s useless.
So maybe slots between protocols could have an advantage? I ran the numbers and it could reduce the risk of total loss by about 80% for senior tracheas.
– 0xngmi (@0xngmi) April 5, 2026
This combination would require that the capital of the senior tranche can still be fully returned, provided that the hack does not exceed the junior buffer in a single day.
Most losses are not from DeFi lending
However, the top 10 list exposes the limitations of the proposal. Drift Protocol, the biggest DeFi hack of 2026, lost $285 million thanks to a governance takeover that emptied the vaults in about 12 minutes.
The rate brackets and limits could have slowed this flight and preserved the funds of senior depositors.
The remaining nine incidents fall into two categories that the tiering does not address. Five of them were centralized exchange failures, including the $1.5 billion Bybit breach and the collapse of FTX and Mt. Gox.
Four were cross-chain bridge exploits affecting Ronin Network, Poly Network, Wormhole and the $BNB Bridge.
Top 10 crypto hacks:
$5.681 TRILLION stolen from the crypto industry
The drift being #10..
1: Bybit – $1.5 billion (February 2025)
2: Ronin Network – $615 million (March 2022)
3: Poly Network – $610 million (August 2021)
4: Binance $BNB Bridge – $570 million (October 2022)
5: Coincheck – $534 million (January 2018)
6: FTX…— ryandcrypto (@ryandcrypto) April 5, 2026
Security experts say DeFi protocol code is increasingly difficult to exploit, shifting the primary attack surface toward people and operational security weaknesses.
“I really hope Hyperliquid is in a war room right now, assuming they’ve already been compromised and looking at everything they’ve done over the last year and a half,” joked Laura Shin, host of the Unchained podcast.
Although data suggests that tranching provides a layer of defense for lending, the industry’s largest financial losses remain linked to centralized infrastructure and human error.
