BNB Smart Chain (BSC) saw a significant 85% reduction in financial losses due to security incidents in 2023 compared to $1.1 billion the previous year. Total reported losses are over $161 million, showing a significant improvement in blockchain security.
This remarkable loss reduction is due to several strategic security measures implemented by BNB’s core chain development team, including AvengerDAO’s proactive warning system, which played a crucial role in preventing fraud and hacks. In 2023, AvengerDAO issued numerous warnings, such as around 3,500 red alert notifications and 330 warning tweets, greatly reducing the impact of potential security threats.
Despite the drop in financial losses, BSC reported a 44% increase in security incidents year-on-year, with a total of 414 incidents reported in 2023, of which 315 occurred in DeFi projects. However, the last quarter of 2023 saw a 64% reduction in fiat losses compared to the third quarter. This decline was further supported by a 51% decrease in hacking incidents in Q4, falling from 130 in Q3 to 86 in Q4.
The report categorized the types of attacks and threats to BSC, with hacks accounting for 50.72% of incidents, closely followed by fraud at 49.03%. Fraud accounted for $87.9 million in losses, a 54% decrease, while hacking resulted in $73.2 million in losses, a 91% decrease.
AvengerDAO’s measurement API played a significant role in this achievement, scanning over 1 million unique contract addresses and identifying 35,000 as high-risk. Despite some missed opportunities to protect projects, the initiative has been effective in mitigating threats to BSC. Comparing the hack values between the two most recent six-month periods, there is a significant drop in losses: from over $713 million in the second half of 2022 to around $34 million in the first half of 2023.
This positive trend in BSC security is also reflected in the vulnerability statistics. BNB Chain accounts for only 0.9% of total vulnerabilities in the ecosystem based on TVL in the first quarter of 2023. Also, only about 9% of the roughly 2,000 active projects in the ecosystem were affected in the first half of 2023.
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