Security News > 2021 > August > Don't get rugged: DeFi scams go from zero to $129 million in a year to become top financial hack
Atlas VPN analyzed financial hacks over the last two-and-a-half years and found that DeFi hacks represent 76% of all major hacks for the first half of 2021.
The problem has jumped from basically zero dollars lost to DeFi hacks in 2019 to $129 million in 2020 and $361 million in the first half of this year.
In 2020, DeFi hacks took in $129 million of the $516 million lost to hacks that year.
DeFi is shorthand for decentralized finance, a system that makes financial products available on a public decentralized blockchain network.
The Atlas VPN analyst who reviewed the data said in a blog post that "Many DeFi projects get hacked because of developer incompetence which causes coding mistakes that hackers can abuse."
The Atlas VPN analysis suggests that there are two types of DeFi scams: Outside agents hacking the DeFi protocol and rug pull scams.