Crypto hacks and exploits resulted in $52 million in losses across 20 major incidents in March, onchain security firm PeckShield reported on Wednesday.

In a post on social media platform X, PeckShield wrote that the $52 million losses reflected a 96% increase from $26.5 million in February.

A significant portion of March's exploit losses came from the Resolv Labs attack, which drained over $25 million from the stablecoin issuer. The Block previously reported that the attacker exploited a flaw in Resolv's USR minting contract, creating around 80 million unbacked stablecoins.

While Resolv issued a 72-hour ultimatum to the attacker to return 90% of the stolen funds, the assets have not been returned.

PeckShield noted in its X post that the real damage lies in the "shadow contagion," which refers to secondary losses across DeFi protocols linked to the exploited platform. In the case of Resolv, PeckShield said the 80% crash in USR stablecoin value created "systemic bad debt" across Morpho Blue, Euler, and Fluid.

Another major incident in March was reported by X user Sillytuna, who claimed that roughly $24 million in Aave Ethereum USDC (aEthUSDC) was stolen from him in a violent attack that involved weapons, kidnapping, and threats of sexual assault.

Following the incident, the attacker reportedly moved the funds across Bitcoin, Monero, and various Layer 2 networks to obscure the origin of the stolen assets. The attack on Sillytuna highlights a recent series of violent attacks on social media personalities targeting their crypto holdings.

Hacks and exploits remain on the rise in crypto and DeFi, as attackers launch increasingly sophisticated attacks targeting vulnerabilities in platforms.

Such attacks often carry a profound impact on projects. DeFi protocol Balancer announced last week that it is closing Balancer Labs, citing challenges brought on by the $128 million exploit on the protocol in November 2025.