New research published in the Journal of Financial Crime by Tim Hall, a professor at the University of Winchester, and Remo Stieger, former partner at SyntiFi, reveals that decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms lost $1.211 billion to flash loan attacks from February 2020 to July 2024. The study found that flash loan attacks accounted for 72 of the 254 successful attacks on DeFi during the same period, representing 18.44% of the total losses of $6.568 billion. The research indicates that attack methods are becoming increasingly sophisticated and unpredictable, with over 80% of flash loan attack losses occurring on the Ethereum network, and individual attack losses ranging from $80,000 to $197 million.