GoKawiilStudy: DeFi flash loan exploits now target protocol logic, not price oracles
A peer-reviewed study in the Journal of Financial Crime examined 72 flash loan attacks between February 2020 and July 2024 that drained $1.211 billion from DeFi platforms, part of 254 total attacks costing $6.568 billion across 20.63 billion transactions on seven blockchains. The researchers found that attacks exploiting flaws in protocol logic rose from 28% of flash loan losses in the first two years of the study to 55% in the most recent period, overtaking price oracle manipulation as the dominant technique.