Key highlights

  • The Binance Wallet Security Center helped users avoid approximately $540 million in potential losses in the first half of 2026.

  • Protection mechanisms operate at every stage of the attack chain, from filtering 206 million spam transfers to detecting 4.93 million high-risk transactions and flagging 996,000 malicious approvals.

  • Bad actors are using AI to scale up scams. The number of malicious entities has nearly tripled quarter over quarter, making it especially important to verify, inspect, and regularly scan your wallet in the Binance Wallet Security Center.

In Web3 security, familiar attack methods such as fake websites, impersonators posing as support staff, and fraudulent projects operate alongside emerging threats. Binance Wallet’s security features help you deal with ever-changing on-chain threats.

In the first half of 2026, Binance Wallet’s Security Center helped users avoid approximately $540 million in potential losses. It runs in the background and scans in real time whenever you open a link, sign a transaction, or receive an unknown token. When it detects something unusual, the Center alerts you. When it detects a clear threat, it blocks it.

In this article, we’ll explore the threat landscape in 2026, look at the features of the integrated Web3 Security Center, examine how AI is changing the way attackers operate and how we respond, and finally, perform a wallet check in just ten seconds.

From mass attacks to precision targeting

In the first half of 2026, the industry’s biggest security incidents caused losses of hundreds of millions of dollars. One notable trend behind many of these incidents is that attacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated and harder to detect. AI now enables threat actors to generate malware at scale, use deepfake videos in calls impersonating executives to bypass internal approval processes, and quickly create fake websites, identities, and scripts at almost no cost.

The incidents below are major security events involving projects in the first half of 2026, compiled from public reports by CertiK and SlowMist.

Figure 1: The crypto industry’s biggest security incidents in the first half of 2026. Source: public reports by CertiK / SlowMist.

Although these incidents may seem far removed from ordinary users, phishing attacks happen much closer to home. According to CertiK’s Hack3D report for the first half of 2026, the number of phishing attacks fell by more than 50% year over year, but total losses declined by only 10.8%, remaining at approximately $370 million. This suggests that attackers may have shifted from mass attacks to precision targeting. ScamSniffer’s data supports this trend: in January 2026 alone, signature phishing attacks caused 4,741 victims to lose $6.27 million, a 207% increase from the previous month.

What Binance Wallet’s integrated Web3 Security Center does

We deploy protections at every stage of the attack chain: filtering traps and spam before they reach you, detecting risky transactions when you sign, and surfacing approvals you may have long forgotten about.

Figure 2: Features of Binance Wallet’s integrated Web3 Security Center

Identify and filter spam and traps

In the first half of 2026, Binance Wallet’s Security Center filtered approximately 206 million spam transfers and protected 2.6 million users. These spam transfers can pose different types of risks. Some are spam airdrop tokens intended to lure you into visiting fake websites or interacting with malicious tokens. Others are address poisoning attempts, in which attackers insert similar-looking wallet addresses into your transaction history to trick you into copying the wrong address when making a transfer. Even a single character difference can send funds to the wrong recipient, and those funds are usually unrecoverable. The Web3 Security Center continuously identifies and filters these risks from your wallet, providing a safer, cleaner wallet experience while helping reduce the chance of costly transfer mistakes.

Scam tokens, honeypots, rug pulls, disguised contracts, and fake domains can all lay traps before you notice. Binance Wallet’s security features aim to detect these risks earlier, across more chains, and at greater speed. If a threat is detected, a risk warning appears, giving you another chance to stop before you click, log in, or buy.

Detect risky transactions when you sign

When you tap “confirm,” just one unclear signature or disguised approval can drain your assets within seconds. In the first half of 2026, Binance Wallet’s security features identified approximately 4.93 million high-risk transactions across 19 chains. Some transactions were blocked directly by the system, while users canceled others after receiving a risk warning from Binance Wallet’s Security Center.

While it can’t block every malicious transaction for you, the Web3 Security Center uses transaction simulation and security detection to help clarify risks before you confirm. You can see what a transaction will do, how your balance may change, and whether an approval will be granted or modified. This helps you spot risks and avoid mistakes before signing.

Surface approvals you may have long forgotten about

Often, the real risk isn’t a single transaction, but an approval that remains active for too long. You may have granted a DApp permission months ago and forgotten about it, but that approval could still leave your authorized assets exposed. Binance Wallet’s security features bring these long-standing risks back into view, helping users see which permissions should no longer remain active. In the first half of 2026, this feature identified approximately 996,000 malicious approvals.

Attacks are evolving with AI

A quarter-by-quarter comparison of the first half of 2026 shows a sharp increase in newly identified malicious entities, including phishing domains, impersonation tokens, malicious contracts, and malicious addresses. This reflects both stronger detection capabilities and the rapid growth in new threats. Entirely new threats are being mass-produced at an unprecedented pace, often designed to deceive users within minutes of deployment, with AI accelerating the evolution of attacks. To stay ahead, Binance Wallet proactively uses AI to strengthen detection, analyze risky intent earlier, and respond more quickly as attack patterns evolve.

How Binance Wallet’s security features use AI to detect threats

For tokens, we look beyond their code or blacklist status, using AI to analyze their behavioral logic and risky intent—including whether a token can be bought but not sold, or whether it hides a backdoor that goes beyond what users could reasonably expect. For websites, we look beyond whether they appear legitimate, using AI to extract risk indicators and identify sites impersonating well-known projects to trick users into signing approvals. This is how the “verify your assets” P2P scam wave was detected in the first half of 2026.

Case study: Siphon tokens

Most users think their funds will be safe as long as they avoid signing approvals or clicking unfamiliar links. Siphon tokens show otherwise. This is a group of scam tokens with backdoors built directly into their contracts, often concealed through deliberately obfuscated code or closed-source contracts that cannot be inspected externally. On the surface, you’re simply buying a token. Seconds later, it could be transferred out of your wallet or reduced entirely to zero, even though you never granted any approval.

Figure 3: How Siphon tokens work

This type of attack bypasses conventional checks because it leaves only limited, short-lived signals that can be detected. Blacklists come too late because these tokens are deployed from disposable wallets that exist for an hour or two before disappearing without a trace. By the time a full security assessment is complete, the money is already gone.

We detect this type of attack by focusing on suspicious behavior. When a token goes against normal logic, hides a backdoor, or clearly signals risky intent, we issue an alert as early as possible. The question we ask is: what is this token actually trying to get users to do?

How to protect yourself

At Binance, we are committed to strengthening every layer of defense, identifying new threats faster, blocking risks more accurately, expanding protection across more chains, and using AI to keep pace with attackers’ evolution. However, no security system can protect you from a decision you are determined to make. We can flag a suspicious contract, warn you before you sign, and show you exactly which approval looks unusual, but the final decision is always yours. Some attacks, such as social engineering, are designed specifically to exploit that gap, bypassing code entirely to target your trust. That’s why these three habits matter just as much as any tool.

  • Understand before you sign: If you can’t explain what a transaction does, don’t sign it.

  • Verify before you trust (DYOR): Confirm that a contact, link, or project is genuine before placing your trust in it.

  • Use the [Security Center]: It takes just ten seconds to spot approvals you should revoke or risky assets you should remove. To access it, open Binance App → [Binance Wallet] → [Settings] → [Security Center] → [Scan Now].

Conclusion

The first half of 2026 showed that attackers are trading scale for precision, with AI lowering the cost of achieving that precision. Binance Wallet’s security features responded by filtering approximately 206 million spam transfers, identifying approximately 4.93 million high-risk transactions across 19 chains, and detecting nearly 996,000 malicious approvals—helping users avoid approximately $540 million in potential losses. At Binance, your security is our priority, and we will continue to accelerate detection and expand protection. However, no tool can undo a transaction you have approved. Understand what you are signing, verify before you trust, and take ten seconds to scan your wallet in Binance Wallet’s Security Center.

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