Kelp DAO Bridge Hack Drains $292M in rsETH

A hacker exploited a vulnerability in Kelp DAO's LayerZero-powered crosschain bridge on April 18, 2026, draining approximately 116,500 rsETH tokens valued at around 292 million dollars from the liquid restaking protocol. The attack, which occurred around 5:35 p.m. UTC and affected Ethereum's mainnet and multiple layer-2 networks, represented about 18 percent of rsETH's circulating supply of roughly 630,000 tokens.

The breach involved manipulating LayerZero's crosschain messaging system, which verifies instructions between blockchains. The attacker sent a spoofed message that tricked the bridge into authorizing an unauthorized transfer of the rsETH to a controlled address. Kelp DAO detected suspicious activity shortly after and paused rsETH contracts across Ethereum and several layer-2 networks, including Base, Arbitrum, Linea, Blast, Mantle, and Scroll, to prevent further losses. "Earlier today we identified suspicious crosschain activity involving rsETH," the protocol stated on X. "We have paused rsETH contracts across mainnet and several L2s while we investigate. We are working with LayerZero, Unichain, our auditors and top security experts on root cause analysis."