The gap is not closing

The first half of 2026 produced more crypto hacks than any six-month period on record: 207 incidents by TRM Labs' count, and DefiLlama called the second quarter the most hacked in the history of DeFi. Individual losses are falling while incident counts climb, which says what actually happened: attacks got cheaper and more numerous while the structural cause stayed exactly where it was. The average smart contract exploit over the last four years cost 1.9 million dollars (Procur3, four-year average), and of DeFi protocol losses specifically, the overwhelming majority now comes from protocol logic (Immunefi, H1 2026).

Protocol logic means the code did what it said, and the code was what no one meant. The industry has become excellent at pricing that failure mode and has made no progress on removing it, because removal is beyond the reach of tooling. It is an architectural property.