Structural failure
Single Point Of Control
A founder or single executive with unilateral authority over customer funds, treasury, or critical infrastructure. No documented checks.
Records exhibiting this pattern
Gnosis Pay Delay Module Exploit — June 2026
Gnosis Pay disclosed an active exploit affecting its delay module and card wallet infrastructure on June 1, 2026, then said the issue was being contained and all affected users would be reimbursed in full.
$— affectedGravity Bridge Halted After Reported $5.4M Exploit
Gravity Bridge, a Cosmos-Ethereum bridge, was reported exploited on 2026-05-31 for about $5.4 million; public reporting and analyst commentary pointed to a possible signing-key or contract-key compromise, after which the bridge was halted.
$5.4M affectedDxSale BNB Chain Liquidity Exploit on May 29, 2026
DxSale lost about $7.3 million in a BNB Chain locker exploit that reportedly affected roughly 1,400 liquidity providers, after a prior ownership transfer and a withdrawal-loop abuse were identified by analysts.
$7.3M affectedStakeDAO vsdCRV Key Compromise on Arbitrum
A suspected StakeDAO deployer-key compromise let an attacker redirect vsdCRV bridge settings, mint more than 5.4 trillion tokens on Arbitrum, and extract roughly $91,000 before liquidity constraints halted further selling.
$91000 affectedSafe Wallet Third-Party Module Exploit in May 2026
A suspected external module tied to Safe wallet integrations drained about $3.2 million from 86 accounts across Ethereum and Base, while Safe Labs and Squid said their core systems were not the source of the breach.
$3.2M affectedBybit Cold-Wallet Hack — February 2025
During a routine multi-sig transfer from an Ethereum cold wallet, malicious code injected into the signing UI tricked three Bybit executives into approving the transfer of approximately 401,000 ETH to a Lazarus-controlled address — at $1.46 billion, the largest cryptocurrency theft on record.
$1.46B affectedWazirX Multi-Sig Hack — July 2024
India's largest cryptocurrency exchange lost approximately $235M from a multi-sig wallet compromise attributed to North Korea's Lazarus Group. Singapore restructuring proceedings remain open.
$235.0M affectedDMM Bitcoin Hack — May 2024
The Japanese exchange lost approximately $305M of BTC to a private-key compromise attributed by the FBI to North Korea's TraderTraitor (Lazarus). DMM covered customer balances and wound down operations in 2025.
$305.0M affectedStake.com Hot-Wallet Hack — September 2023
The Australian-licensed crypto-betting platform lost ~$41M to a hot-wallet compromise attributed by the FBI to North Korea's Lazarus Group. Customer balances were unaffected.
$41.0M affectedMultichain Bridge Disappearance — July 2023
The cross-chain bridge stopped processing transactions and approximately $130M was drained from bridge contracts after its founder and CEO Zhaojun He was reportedly detained by Chinese authorities.
$130.0M affectedAtomic Wallet Hack — June 2023
Approximately 5,500 users of the Estonian non-custodial Atomic Wallet lost a combined ~$100M in June 2023, in an attack attributed by Elliptic and US law enforcement to North Korea's Lazarus Group.
$100.0M affectedBlockFi Collapse — November 2022
The New Jersey crypto lender filed Chapter 11 sixteen days after FTX, citing direct exposure to FTX and Alameda as the final blow on top of earlier losses to Three Arrows Capital.
$1.30B affectedFTX Collapse — November 2022
The world's second-largest crypto exchange filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy within nine days of a leaked Alameda balance sheet that revealed commingled customer funds.
$8.00B affectedCelsius Network Collapse — July 2022
The largest centralised crypto lender suspended withdrawals on 12 June 2022 and filed for Chapter 11 a month later, owing approximately $4.7 billion to retail depositors.
$4.70B affectedKuCoin Hot-Wallet Hack — September 2020
Attackers drained $281M from KuCoin hot wallets across BTC, ETH, ERC-20 and stablecoin balances. Project teams froze and blacklisted stolen tokens; approximately 84% of value was eventually recovered.
$281.0M affectedQuadrigaCX Collapse — January 2019
Canada's largest crypto exchange collapsed after its 30-year-old founder Gerald Cotten was pronounced dead in India in December 2018, leaving sole access to ~$190M in customer funds. Forensic investigation later concluded the exchange had been a Ponzi scheme.
$190.0M affectedBitGrail NANO Hack — February 2018
The Italian exchange disclosed approximately $170M in losses of NANO tokens. Founder Francesco Firano was later found liable by Italian courts and BitGrail entered bankruptcy proceedings.
$170.0M affectedCoincheck NEM Hack — January 2018
The Tokyo exchange lost $530M in NEM tokens from a hot wallet — the largest crypto theft on record at the time. Customers were reimbursed in JPY at recovery prices.
$530.0M affectedParity Multi-Sig Wallet Freeze — November 2017
A user calling himself 'devops199' invoked a library function that turned a critical Parity contract into a self-destructed shell, freezing approximately $300M worth of ETH across 587 wallets — permanently inaccessible.
$300.0M affectedBitfinex Hack — August 2016
Attackers extracted 119,756 BTC from Bitfinex segregated hot wallets, worth $72M at the time. In February 2022 the US government seized $4.7B of the proceeds and arrested the two-person laundering operation.
$72.0M affected