Kirill Varlamov

DeFi's April hack count keeps rising: 15+ exploits, ~$1B+ gone, and AI is the quiet suspect behind most of them This is the first month where AI-priced offense visibly outran DeFi defense, and the research showing why isn't speculation - it's measured and replicable 🧵 /1

DeFi's April hack count keeps rising: 15+ exploits, ~$1B+ gone, and AI is the quiet suspect behind most of them This is the first month where AI-priced offense visibly outran DeFi defense, and the research showing why isn't speculation - it's measured and replicable 🧵 /1

Kelp DAO appears to have been exploited for $293 MILLION in the last hour, making it the biggest DeFi hack of 2026. And it's far from being the only one this month. Over $600M stolen from DeFi in the last 2 weeks across over 10 different protocols, and AI is only making it easier for hackers. > Kelp DAO: attacker exploited the LayerZero bridge to drain 116,500 rsETH ($293M), then used it as collateral on Aave to borrow ETH, leaving Aave with bad debt as $AAVE dumps. > Drift Protocol: $285M drained by North Korean hackers using AI powered social engineering, they spent months building trust with insiders before executing in 12 minutes. > Rhea Finance: $18M stolen through fake token pools that tricked the protocol's oracle into approving withdrawals. > Grinex: $15M stolen, sanctioned Russian exchange suspended all operations and blamed "Western intelligence". > Hyperbridge: attacker minted 1 billion fake bridged DOT with a notional value over $1B, but only extracted about $237K because liquidity was thin. > BSC TMM pool: $1.67M drained through reserve manipulation. > Aethir: $423K lost in an access control exploit on their GPU network. > Dango: $410K stolen through a smart contract bug in their bridge aggregator. > Silo Finance: $392K gone from a misconfigured oracle. > CoW Swap: frontend hijacked through DNS attack, site redirected to a phishing page. > Zerion: hit by North Korean social engineering, credentials stolen. The attack surface is expanding faster than the defenses. This is only going to get worse.

DeFi's April hack count keeps rising: 15+ exploits, ~$1B+ gone, and AI is the quiet suspect behind most of them This is the first month where AI-priced offense visibly outran DeFi defense, and the research showing why isn't speculation - it's measured and replicable 🧵 /1

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