Pig slaughter scams led to $3.6 billion in crypto losses in 2024, becoming the top fraud scheme of the year, according to a report from web3 security firm Cyvers.
The long-term fraud scheme, which prepares victims over time to make substantial investments, surpassed other forms of crypto scams in 2024. The report highlighted that $3.6 billion in stolen funds were traced to the Ethereum alone (ETH) blockchain.
Pig slaughter is increasing
Cyvers tracked more than 150,000 addresses and 800,000 transactions related to pig slaughter scams, illustrating the scale of the problem. The report follows an FBI announcement estimating $3.96 billion in losses from hog slaughter programs by 2023.
The report also highlighted the evolving sophistication of scammers, noting that many victims were lured through dating apps and social media platforms. Scammers created fake profiles, built trust over weeks or months, and convinced victims to invest in fraudulent crypto platforms that appeared legitimate.
In response to the rise in pig slaughter scams, Cyvers recommended more user education, better wallet security measures and stricter regulations for crypto platforms. The company also emphasized the importance of real-time monitoring and advanced threat detection systems to limit potential losses.
Cyber threats and remediations
Cyber threats will increase by 40% by 2024, resulting in $2.3 billion in losses across 165 incidents. Despite the strong increase, total losses remained 37% lower than in 2022.
Ethereum was the top target for scammers, with access control breaches causing $1.9 billion in losses across 67 incidents. Smart contract exploits accounted for $456.8 million, while a single address poisoning incident resulted in $68.7 million in stolen funds.
Efforts to combat fraud have raised $1.3 billion this year, thanks to on-chain researchers like ZachXBT and bug bounty programs.
The first quarter of the year saw the highest number of incidents, with 53 cases recorded. However, the largest financial losses occurred in the third quarter, totaling $760 million.
Major incidents included a $305 million DMM Exchange breach due to a compromised private key, a $235 million hack targeting WazirX via a multi-signature wallet vulnerability, and $52 million in losses suffered by BingX after hot wallet exploits.
The Cyvers report shows that access control incidents account for 81% of total losses, despite accounting for only 41.6% of all reported cases.