Cryptocurrency analytics firm Elliptic has published a new report showing that the DeFi sector has lost $12 billion in the past two years, most of those lost happening this year with 10.5 million. billion dollars.

Most of it was the result of protocol failure, $10 billion loss related to tokens that lost market value due to fraud.

Source: Elliptic

Only $2 billion was stolen through attacks that directly targeted DeFi projects. This type of incident includes the recent attacks on Anubis DAO and Cream Finance.

Elliptic notes that $721 million in lost funds of this type were eventually recovered, so the category becomes less important.

Various attack strategies and application types

The attackers who carried out DeFi attacks used a variety of strategies. $5.5 billion in losses came from exploiting code vulnerabilities, while another $5.3 billion came from economic vulnerabilities. Exploiting the admin key vulnerability caused $1 billion in losses, while the "rug pull" or exit scam accounted for only $18 million.

Different types of DeFi applications are targeted to varying degrees. Lending applications accounted for 34%, DEXs accounted for 17.1%, asset management applications accounted for 16.4%, and cross-chain bridges accounted for 13.5%.

The metric that Elliptic calculates is based on two large series. Ethereum-based DeFi applications accounted for 71% of the total with $8.6 billion, while Binance Smart Chain (BSC)-based applications accounted for 21% with $2.5 billion.

Source: Elliptic

Other Estimates of DeFi Attacks

Elliptic's numbers are higher than estimates for other entities. In August, CipherTrace claimed that DeFi crime caused $361 million in losses in 2021 and $129 million in 2020.

Meanwhile, The Block 's live data tracker suggests that $629 million has been stolen through DeFi exploits since 2020.

Those differences may indicate that Elliptic has surveyed the DeFi terrain more closely than its competitors. On the other hand, including the drop in token value could have boosted its estimate.