TL;DR
- Record losses: Crypto losses exceeded $1 billion in H1 2026, with Blockaid tracking 212 incidents.
- Ethereum impact: Blockaid reported $332 million in Ethereum losses driven mainly by code exploits and key compromises.
- Solana vulnerabilities: Blockaid said compromised keys caused more than 98% of Solana’s $326 million in losses, far above 2025 levels.
Crypto losses surged past $1 billion in the first half of 2026, marking the most damaging six‑month stretch the industry has ever recorded, according to new findings from Blockaid. The onchain security platform said the period set an all‑time high for confirmed hacks, driven by large‑scale exploits across Ethereum and Solana and a sharp rise in high‑threshold incidents.
Ethereum Faces Heavy Damage From Code Exploits
Blockaid said Ethereum suffered roughly $332 million in losses during H1 2026, the highest total among all networks. Attackers primarily targeted vulnerabilities in applications built on Ethereum, with code exploits dominating incident counts. The report highlighted major losses tied to key compromises involving Humanity Protocol and StablR, while CoWSwap was the only major Ethereum case classified as a user mistake.
According to Blockaid, attackers relied on several recurring methods when targeting Ethereum. Bugs in bridges and smart contracts, unauthorized access to privileged accounts, and market manipulation techniques were among the most common vectors. The platform said Ethereum remains a prime target because it hosts many of the industry’s most valuable applications, including restaking platforms, stablecoins and decentralized exchanges.
Solana Hit Hard by Key Compromises
Solana recorded nearly $326 million in losses, almost matching Ethereum’s total and sharply exceeding the roughly $127 million it lost in 2025. Blockaid said the change did not stem from a rise in smart contract exploits. Instead, compromised keys accounted for more than 98% of Solana’s losses, driven largely by incidents involving Drift Protocol and Step Finance. The report linked those breaches to North Korea‑linked cyber groups, noting that signer infrastructure and organizational security were the primary weak points.
A handful of code exploits involving Raydium and Volo contributed to the remaining losses, but Blockaid emphasized that key‑related failures defined Solana’s threat landscape in H1 2026. The largest single exploit across all networks came from KelpDAO at $292 million, while Blockaid verified 3.4 times as many high‑threshold exploits as it did throughout all of 2025.
