AI has not triggered DeFi ‘hackpocalypse,’ Dragonfly partner says
Total value stolen and median hack size are declining compared to 2025, signaling that the AI hacking apocalypse was a false alarm, argued Dragonfly’s managing partner Haseeb Qureshi.
Fears that artificial intelligence would trigger a wave of catastrophic decentralized finance (DeFi) hacks in what was coined as a “hackpocalypse” have not materialized, according to Dragonfly managing partner Haseeb Qureshi.
While the incident count grew to a record high, the median size of hacks has dipped below $500,000 this year, down from over $2 million in 2025. Qureshi argued that this shows malicious actors using AI are targeting “small protocols and abandonware” while larger DeFi protocols have fortified themselves against AI’s threat.
Excluding outlier months with large incidents, such as the Bybit hack in February 2025 along with the Drift Protocol and KelpDAO exploits in April of this year, 2026 has still seen less value hacked per month than the previous year, said Qureshi.
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