Apart from the poor market conditions, 2022 has witnessed some of the biggest crypto hacks in one year, which is emphasized more below:

Let us take you through them.

1. Wormhole Bridge: $325 million

The Wormhole Bridge is ideally used to transact tokens between Ethereum, Solana, BNB Chain, Polygon, Avalanche, Oasis, and Terra. In February this year, the network came under attack from hackers, resulting in a loss of 120,000 tokens. At the time of the hack, the tokens were worth around $325 million.

The hacker faked the verification process on the network while minting Wrapped Ethereum tokens (WETH). Once the minting was done, the hacker swapped around 94,000 tokens on Ethereum and the rest of the tokens were swapped on the Solana blockchain in exchange for other altcoins.

Although the network offered a $10 million bounty on the hacker, it was of no use. Finally Jump Crypto, the parent company of the network, compensated for the loss.

2. Ronin Chain Hack: $625 million

The Ronin sidechain was used for Axie Infinity, the incredibly popular P2E NFT game. The Ronin network was hacked the month in March. Initially, it was estimated that the hackers siphoned off $552 million worth of Ethereum and USDC. The developer group Sky Mavis later revealed the attack to be worth $625 million.

The hackers gained access to several private keys and faked transactions on the network. Later, it was revealed that a North Korean hacker organisation named Lazarus was behind the attack.

3. Beanstalk Farms: $182 million

The month of April witnessed the Beanstalk Farms hack, a stablecoin protocol based on Ethereum. On April 17, the developers found some red flags in the governance system of the network.

The hacker used a flash loan to amass a massive chunk of money in the form of STALK, the governance token of the network. Almost $80 million across a diverse set of cryptocurrencies was compromised, which in turn destabilised the 1:1 peg of the stablecoin with the US dollar. It resulted in the meltdown of the $182 million which was locked as its total value (TVL). The hacker laundered the money through Tornado Cash, which at the moment is banned by the US government. However, before disappearing, he donated 250,000 USDC to Ukraine as wartime assistance.

4. Nomad Network Hack: $190

The Nomad Network was another one of the biggest hacks this year which took place in August. The platform had initiated an upgrade that contained a bug in its system. The hackers used this bug as a point of vulnerability in the system and hacked the network of all its funds.

The network was holding funds in Ethereum, FXS, CQT, DAI and USDC. The Nomad chain hack compelled the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to warn investors against the impending dangers of crypto. Around $22 million was recovered after the hackers were promised a return of 10 percent of the funds that they returned.

5. Winterminute Hack: $162 million

The UK-based crypto developer company Winterminute was hacked in September resulting in a loss of almost $162 million. Certik, a well-known blockchain security firm, pointed out that a particular private key was compromised, and the hacker used brute force or leak to conduct the hack afterwards. It was also pointed out that a vulnerability in the Profanity address generator was also exploited in the hack.

However, fortunately, the company’s centralized and over-the-counter finance systems were not compromised.

6. Binance Smart Chain Hack: $566 million

Binance is the biggest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, leading an incredibly huge market for investors. The attack on Binance Smart Chain occurred on October 6, 2022.

The hackers infiltrated the BNB cross-chain bridge Token Hub where they were able to mint fraudulent BNB tokens, through fake withdrawal proofs.

Initially, the estimate was $566 million. However, the CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao, traced back 80-90 percent of the lost funds. However, the hackers were still able to get away with $100 million by moving the money across other chains.

7. The FTX Collapse: $650 million

The FTX collapse was the worst event in the cryptoverse in 2022. Billions of dollars were lost upon the meltdown of the second biggest crypto exchange in the world as the company filed for bankruptcy due to liquidity crunches.

Amid the breakdown, several FTX wallets were targeted and hacked, where the attackers got away with $640 million in tokens. The funds were eventually moved across different exchanges and converted into other altcoins.