SlowMist has published its 2025 Blockchain Security & AML Annual Report, offering a detailed look at how blockchain security threats, cybercrime, and regulatory enforcement evolved over the past year.
The findings reveal a sharper, more industrialized threat landscape, one where attacks scale faster, criminals organize better, and compliance becomes non-negotiable.
According to the report, 2025 marks a turning point. Blockchain crime grows fewer in number but heavier in impact. Regulatory authorities move beyond warnings into direct intervention. Hacker groups professionalize. Underground money laundering adapts under pressure.
SlowMist frames 2025 as the year blockchain security shifts from reactive defense to structural necessity. The report pulls together incident data, attack patterns, regulatory actions, and recovery outcomes to show how Web3 risk now operates end to end.
The full findings were shared publicly by the SlowMist team in a detailed release, available here.
Losses Concentrate As Attacks Become More Severe
In 2025, blockchain security incidents decline in count but surge in financial damage. SlowMist recorded around 200 major security incidents, resulting in approximately $2.935 billion in losses. This compares with 410 incidents and $2.013 billion in losses in 2024.
Fewer attacks now cause more damage. That shift reflects better targeting, improved execution, and larger attack surfaces.
By ecosystem, Ethereum remains the most affected, with losses totaling $183.25 million, followed by Solana at $17.45 million and Arbitrum at $17.10 million. These figures reflect where capital, liquidity, and complexity concentrate.
By project type, DeFi leads in incident count, with 126 incidents and $649 million in losses. However, centralized exchanges account for the largest financial damage, with 22 incidents totaling $1.809 billion. One event dominates that category: Bybit’s single loss of $1.46 billion, underscoring the systemic risk tied to custodial infrastructure.
Attack vectors also show clear patterns. SlowMist reports 56 smart contract exploits and 50 account compromise incidents, confirming that both code-level vulnerabilities and credential theft remain critical risk factors.
The report cautions that these figures are conservative. Losses are calculated using token prices at the time of each incident. Unreported attacks, excluded individual user losses, and market volatility mean actual losses are likely higher.
Scam Techniques Evolve Into Industrialized Crime
Scams in 2025 are no longer crude. They are layered, automated, and psychologically precise.
SlowMist identifies phishing, social engineering, supply chain attacks, malicious browser extensions, AI-powered fraud, and Ponzi schemes as the dominant scam categories, each evolving in sophistication.
Phishing becomes multi-stage. Attackers now guide victims through “completion flows” where users unknowingly authorize their own theft. Techniques like Clickfix, EIP-7702 abuse, and Fake Safeguard prompts blur the line between user action and attacker control.
Social engineering deepens. Identity spoofing, emotional pressure, and AI-assisted conversations appear in fake interviews, hardware wallet scams, and impersonation campaigns. Trust becomes the primary attack surface.
Supply chain attacks escalate as malicious code slips into open-source libraries and developer tools, impacting downstream users at scale. Browser extensions with high privileges become another entry point, quietly siphoning data and assets.
AI dramatically lowers the cost of deception. Realistic text, voice, image, and video content makes scams harder to detect and easier to mass-produce.
Ponzi schemes persist, disguised as “blockchain finance” or “big data platforms.” Many rely on stablecoin deposits and multi-level referral systems, with DGCX cited as a representative example.
The conclusion is blunt. Scams are no longer isolated tricks. They are industrialized systems designed to exploit trust, technology, and human behavior simultaneously.
AML Enforcement Accelerates Worldwide
Regulatory posture shifts decisively in 2025. Authorities move from signaling intent to active enforcement.
SlowMist documents intensified crackdowns on money laundering, fraud, sanctions evasion, and illicit financing. Enforcement expands beyond exchanges and stablecoins to include infrastructure providers and even individual on-chain addresses.
Key actions include operations against malware networks, dark web markets, and cybercrime infrastructure. The cryptocurrency exchange Garantex becomes a notable target. Authorities also dismantle fraud rings, Ponzi networks, and so-called “pig-butchering” operations. Compliance failures face direct penalties.
Compliance itself becomes a market filter. AML/KYC, tax transparency, custody security, disclosure standards, and stablecoin rules rise to the top of operational priorities. The regulatory conversation shifts from whether to regulate to how to enforce effectively.
In 2025, compliance is no longer optional. It becomes a prerequisite for survival.
Funds Freeze, Recovery, And Criminal Infrastructure
Despite escalating losses, recovery efforts gain traction.
In 2025, Tether froze USDT-ERC20 on 576 Ethereum addresses, while Circle froze USDC-ERC20 on 214 addresses. Across 18 major incidents, roughly $387 million of $1.957 billion stolen funds were frozen or recovered, yielding a 13.2% recovery rate.
SlowMist directly assisted clients, partners, and public investigations in freezing or recovering approximately $19.29 million during the year.
The report also maps the evolving underground ecosystem. DPRK-linked hacker groups shift from isolated exploits to highly organized operations, targeting centralized services and running industrialized laundering pipelines. In some cases, IT outsourcing arrangements mask illicit fund flows.
Drainer activity declines sharply. Losses fall to $83.85 million across 106,106 victims, down 83% and 68% respectively from 2024. The largest single theft reaches $6.5 million via a Permit signature, while EIP-7702 malicious signatures emerge after the Pectra upgrade. SlowMist credits @realScamSniffer for key analytical contributions.
Ransomware and malware operations benefit from MaaS and RaaS commercialization, lowering entry barriers and fueling a cybercrime supply chain. Law enforcement takedowns of LockBit and LummaC2 mark important disruptions.
Privacy and coin-mixing tools remain central to laundering, but regulatory thinking evolves. The focus shifts from blanket bans toward distinguishing legitimate privacy technology from criminal abuse, seeking balance rather than suppression.
Security And Compliance Become Survival Thresholds
SlowMist distills 2025 into three defining trends: attacks professionalize, criminal chains grow covert, and regulatory enforcement strengthens.
DeFi permission issues surge. Social engineering accelerates. Information theft and private key leaks increase. Underground tooling turns cybercrime into plug-and-play operations. Laundering networks span Southeast Asian scam hubs, DPRK cybercrime flows, and privacy-focused mixers.
Cross-border AML and FATF enforcement tightens the space criminals operate in. As a result, security and compliance evolve from risk mitigation into business thresholds.
Web3 success now depends on more than innovation. It requires robust security frameworks, continuous risk identification, regulatory readiness, and real-time on-chain monitoring.
SlowMist positions its response as a closed-loop, AI-driven security and compliance system. Before incidents, it delivers audits and training. During incidents, it provides on-chain monitoring and real-time threat detection. After incidents, it supports tracking, forensics, and emergency response.
Powered by artificial intelligence, MistEye, MistTrack, InMist Lab, and SlowMist’s offensive and defensive operations aim to automate threat detection, tracing, and compliance support.
The message of the 2025 report is unmistakable. Blockchain is no longer an experimental frontier. It is critical infrastructure, and securing it is now the cost of entry.
Disclosure: This is not trading or investment advice. Always do your research before buying any cryptocurrency or investing in any services.
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Source: https://nulltx.com/slowmist-releases-2025-blockchain-security-and-aml-annual-report/
