BNB Smart Chain (BSC) saw its financial losses from security incidents in 2023 drop significantly by 85% compared to $1.1 billion the previous year. Total reported losses were over $161 million, indicating significant improvements in blockchain security.
This notable loss reduction can be attributed to a number of strategic security measures implemented by the BNB Chain Core development team, including AvengerDAO’s proactive warning system, which has been instrumental in preempting fraud and hacks. In 2023, AvengerDAO issued numerous alerts, including approximately 3,500 red alert notifications and 330 warning tweets, significantly reducing the impact of potential security threats.
Despite the decline in financial losses, BSC reported a 44% year-on-year increase in security incidents, with a total of 414 incidents reported in 2023, 315 of which occurred in DeFi projects. However, in the fourth quarter of 2023, fiat losses decreased by 64% compared to the third quarter. This decline is further supported by a 51% decrease in hacking incidents in the fourth quarter, from 130 in the third quarter to 86 in the fourth quarter.
The report breaks down the types of attacks and threats to BSC, with hacking accounting for 50.72% of incidents, followed closely by fraud at 49.03%. Losses due to fraud decreased 54% to $87.9 million, while losses due to hacking decreased 91% to $73.2 million.
AvengerDAO’s Meter API played a key role in this achievement by scanning over 1 million unique contract addresses and identifying 35,000 as high risk. Despite some missed opportunities to protect the project, the plan was effective in mitigating threats to the BSC. Comparing the value of the hacks over the most recent six months, losses have decreased significantly. Losses decreased significantly from more than $713 million in the second half of 2022 to approximately $34 million in the first half of 2023.
These positive trends in the BSC security environment are also reflected in vulnerability statistics. The BNB chain accounted for only 0.9% of the total vulnerabilities in the ecosystem as of Q1 2023 TVL. Additionally, only about 9% of the roughly 2,000 active projects in the ecosystem were impacted in the first half of 2023.
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