August's 50 Hacks Set 2026 Monthly Record as Crypto Losses Fell 49%

August saw 50 significant crypto hacks, more than any other month this year. The combined losses came to $136.3 million, a fall of 49.5% from July.

PeckShield, a blockchain security firm, published the numbers on Tuesday, showing attackers hitting with greater frequency while collecting far less per breach.

Cronos Halt Limited the Month's Biggest Exploit

One incident above all dominated the month. Tectonic, the largest lending protocol on Cronos (CRO), reportedly lost close to $74 million, making it the year's fourth-largest crypto theft to date.

Before validators froze the network, the attacker had shifted only about $6 million to Ethereum (ETH).

PeckShield noted: "The exploiter has since started laundering the stolen funds, bridging them to #BTC (~200K so far)."

Cronos later rolled the chain back to its pre-attack state and resumed producing blocks.

#PeckShieldAlert n August 2026, the crypto industry experienced 50 major hacks (+67% from July's 30 hacks), resulting in total losses of $136.3M – a 49.5% month-over-month decrease from July's $270M.

The Tectonic.cro incident, which resulted in ~$74M in losses, was the…

— PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert) September 1, 2026

Hack Count Climbed as Individual Losses Shrank

The 50 events in August exceeded the 40 registered in each of April, May, and June. January, February, and March saw 16, 15, and 20 hacks, respectively, as tallied by PeckShield.

The average loss per hack came to about $2.7 million, versus roughly $9 million in July. PeckShield's ten largest incidents accounted for $123.34 million of the monthly total, leaving around $12.9 million across the remaining 40 hacks, per BeInCrypto calculations.

April still stands as the year's costliest month at $646.89 million, driven by the Drift and KelpDAO exploits, which alone produced $577 million.

Moonwell trailed Tectonic with $8.7 million in August losses. Term Labs was drained of $8.5 million, Coinsbuy of $7.9 million, and TAC of $7.5 million. Injective, MANTRA, BounceBit, Cosmos Labs, and aquifer completed the top ten.