Is the crypto industry going wild with hacks apart from major positive developments? Adding to the latest list of exploitations, PeckShieldAlert, an on-chain security analyst, has reported an unauthorized wallet drain on Unleash Protocol, losing nearly $3.9 million worth of assets.
Anonymous actors have played with the decentralized finance (DeFi) project Unleash Protocol’s smart contracts, withdrawing and transferring user funds without due authorization.
The DeFi project has acknowledged the incident on X, and their investigation found that an external address got administrative control through the platform’s multisig governance. The team behind the external wallet did an unauthorized contract upgrade, leading to asset withdrawal without approval from the Unleash team.
Several digital assets like USDC stablecoin, wrapped Ether (WETH), staked IP (stIP), vault token (vIP), and WIP were pulled from the protocol.
The attack happened within the Unleash Protocol’s governance and permission ecosystem. However, the Story Protocol ecosystem, where Unleash Protocol is built, was not affected by the exploitation.
To prevent further hacks, the DeFi project has immediately paused its operations and is currently working with security experts and forensic investigators to identify the cause of the hack. The Unleash Protocol team has also warned users from interacting with any of the platform’s contracts until further notice.
Just a week ago, the crypto industry was hit with a major hack: hackers exploited the Trust Wallet crypto wallet provider for $6 million. Additionally, a couple of weeks ago, the Balancer DeFi protocol and the Upbit exchange hack caused millions worth of assets to be lost.
The Bybit hack in February 2025 became the largest widely known single-incident crypto exchange exploitation in the history of crypto.
In brief, amid the positive growth in crypto ETFs, stablecoins, and RWA tokenization in 2025, stories of hacks have seriously affected the crypto ecosystem. Multiple crypto platforms besides the aforementioned suffered massive losses of funds, and many platforms are working to retain and reimburse the funds.
Crypto innovation continues to grow; however, hackers are keeping a close eye on the industry, striving to unlock any potential loopholes that would work in their favor.
