The development of the DeFi industry has brought hackers 97% of the revenue from attacks

According to Chainalysis, 97% of the profits from hacker attacks came from the DeFi industry, which brought record profits to attackers in the first 4 months of 2022. Investors lost $1.7 billion, most of the losses came from hacks of the Ronin sidechain and the Wormhole bridge of the Solana blockchain.

The latest attacks by hackers went beyond the usual crimes for profit, with more than $840 million of those funds ending up in the hands of the Lazarus Group, the group behind the DPRK’s intelligence services.

The low security of DeFi industry protocols has compromised international security by allowing the financing of North Korea’s nuclear program. This is not the only complaint about decentralized finance. A Chainalysis report shows that 69% of money laundering transactions, go through DeFi-platforms.

Last year, that share was at 19%, but the increase in liquidity and lack of verification requirements, allows tokens to be exchanged seamlessly into more liquid cryptocurrencies to further entangle the trail in mixers.

Quarterly trends in the financial performance of attacks show a steady increase, coinciding with the development of DeFi.

This is forcing regulators to join forces on operational rules and security audits. According to analysts, if legislative efforts do not cut off hacker activity, countries will move to direct bans. In particular, there is already a precedent of the U.S. Treasury Department blacklisting the Blender mixer.