[Digital Today reporter Chi-gyu Hwang] More than 20 cryptocurrency hacking incidents occurred in April, the most on record, The Block recently reported, citing DeFi Llama.

DeFi Llama said on social media platform X (Twitter), "April recorded the most hacks by count in cryptocurrency history."

The biggest single hacking incident in April was a $292 million loss at KelpDAO. It is considered one of the biggest hacks on record. The incident triggered concerns over bad debt at decentralised finance (DeFi) lending protocol Aave, leading several organisations to pledge emergency loans and donations.

A hack of Solana-based derivatives exchange Drift Protocol that occurred on April 1 was the second-largest, with losses of $280 million.

Polkadot-based protocol Hyperbridge also suffered losses of $2.5 million. The attacker exploited a token gateway vulnerability to first steal about 245 ether, then an hour later used a forged cross-chain message to bypass Merkle Mountain Range proof verification. The attacker then minted and sold about 1 billion bridged DOT tokens.

Discussion also continued over the hacking methods. X user 'CuriousCrypto' said, "Drift and Kelp were not caused by a code bug. It was social engineering carried out over months against people with admin keys."