Companies working on platforms underpinning web3 – the notion that the future of the internet will be decentralised – have lost more than $2bn to hacks and scams since the start of 2022, according to a new report by web3 security firm CertiK. An analyst who spoke to Tech Monitor warned these companies are under assault from criminal gangs and nation state-backed groups from countries like Russia and North Korea.
The report suggests the cryptocurrency space is particularly prone to traditional methods of exploitation including hacking, scams and phishing, alongside newer crypto-specific attacks, and the amount of money being obtained by criminals is increasing.
Though $2bn may seem a large sum, it is a drop in the ocean compared to the overall value of decentralised assets that underpin web3, says Jared Klee, an analyst from Futurum Research. “The market cap for crypto is about $3tn overall, so $2bn against that is a lot smaller than $2bn on its own,” he says. “That’s no consolation for those whose money was stolen but there is a lot of money in the space at the moment.”
He explains: “You have an industry that has grown up very quickly and that has had an enormous amount of money flow into it in a relatively short period of…
