North Korean hackers and attacks on decentralized finance blockchains have caused significant challenges, leading to massive outflows of user assets. DefiLlama data reveals that multiple DeFi chains have experienced a decline of approximately 90% in total user deposits, especially since the previous cryptocurrency cycle. On-chain analyst 0xThoor has identified Harmony, an Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible blockchain, as the platform with the largest decrease in DeFi total value locked.
Harmony launched its layer-1 mainnet in 2019, two years prior to the previous bull market and its peak in 2021. By January 2022, Harmony’s total value locked had reached an all-time high, surpassing $1.4 billion. However, in June, the North Korean hacker group Lazarus stole $100 million from Harmony’s Horizon bridge, marking one of the largest hacks in DeFi history. Following this incident, Harmony’s user deposits steadily declined. At the time of publication, the protocol held $1.7 million in total value locked, representing a 99% decrease from its peak in 2022.
DeFi total value locked for projects such as Aurora, Moonrise, Canto, and Evmos has also experienced significant declines of at least 90%. Even Polygon, a popular Ethereum-based scaling solution, has lost 92% of its total value locked. The amount of crypto deposited on the L2 has dropped from $9.9 billion in 2021 to $700 million in early 2025. On Feb. 10, 0xThoor tweeted, “Many more total value locked charts will resemble this in the coming years.”
Currently, the total value locked in DeFi stands at over $106 billion, a decrease from $175 billion in 2025. Despite major protocol collapses, projects like Base, which is incubated by Coinbase, and the emergence of Bitcoin DeFi interoperability, have the potential to drive the on-chain ecosystem to new heights as adoption accelerates.