Dragonfly Pushes Back on DeFi AI ‘Hackpocalypse’ Fears

Total value stolen and median hack size are declining compared to 2025, signaling that the AI hacking apocalypse was a false alarm, argued Dragonfly managing partner Haseeb Qureshi.

Fears that artificial intelligence would trigger a wave of catastrophic decentralized finance (DeFi) hacks in what was coined as a “hackpocalypse” have not materialized, according to Dragonfly managing partner Haseeb Qureshi.

While the incident count grew to a record high, the median size of hacks has dipped below $500,000 this year, down from over $2 million in 2025. Qureshi argued that this shows malicious actors using AI are targeting “small protocols and abandonware” while larger DeFi protocols have fortified themselves against AI’s threat.

Excluding outlier months with large incidents, such as the Bybit hack in February 2025 along with the Drift Protocol and KelpDAO exploits in April of this year, 2026 has still seen less value hacked per month than the previous year, said Qureshi.

The comments come in response to concerns shared by blockchain security platform OpenZeppelin’s founder, Manuel Aráoz, who said that he considers “ all of DeFi unsafe ,” citing the growing ability of AI coding agents to identify smart contract vulnerabilities.

Broader industry datasets, which include centralized platforms, wallet compromises and phishing, as well as DeFi exploits, offer a less reassuring picture. In April, crypto hacks surged, resulting in losses of around $644 million, marking an over one-year high last seen in February 2025 when the $1.4 billion Bybit hack pushed monthly losses to $1.46 billion, according to DefiLlama.

Losses to cryptocurrency hacks fell 46.8% year-on-year to $1.32 billion in the first half of 2026, but blockchain security company CertiK argued that the Web3 industry’s lower headline losses do not necessarily mean the industry is safer.

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While it marks a significant drop in dollar value, last year’s figures were skewed by the $1.4 billion Bybit hack, the largest in crypto history, CertiK told Cointelegraph.

During the second quarter of 2026, over 70% of the losses stemmed from the KelpDAO and Drift Protocol exploits, which were largely attributed to North Korean state-sponsored hackers.

Monthly change in crypto exploit amounts and number of incidents across H1. Source: CertiK

The data underscores the continued threat that North Korean hackers pose to the crypto industry, having stolen more than $6 billion worth of crypto since 2017, TRM Labs estimated in April.

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