Kelp DAO Burns 117,132 rsETH, Resumes Withdrawals

Kelp DAO and Aave announced a key recovery milestone Tuesday following the April 18 exploit of Kelp's rsETH bridge, which drained approximately 292 million in funds, confirming they have burned the attacker's 117,132 rsETH tokens on Arbitrum and plan to resume user withdrawals within 24 hours.

The hack, the largest DeFi security breach of 2026 and widely attributed to North Korea's Lazarus Group, targeted Kelp's LayerZero bridge adapter handling rsETH, a liquid restaking token built on EigenLayer. The exploiter used the stolen rsETH as collateral on Aave to borrow wrapped ether, generating about 190 million in bad debt for the lending protocol. Kelp DAO stated that rsETH on Ethereum mainnet and layer-2 networks remains fully backed, with a current market capitalization around 1.5 billion.

To address the shortfall, Aave spearheaded DeFi United, an industry recovery initiative that raised over 300 million in ether, including contributions from the Arbitrum Security Council. The council froze roughly 72 million in attacker-linked ether on Arbitrum. Although plaintiffs from prior North Korean terrorism cases sought to claim those funds, a U.S. federal court approved their transfer...