News linked to both this project and an event.
According to on-chain analyst Ai Yi's monitoring, the Venus attacker transferred 2,301 ETH (approximately $5.32 million) to address 0xa21…23A7f 11 hours ago. Subsequently, the funds were laundered in batches via Tornado Cash. Currently, there is still $17.45 million worth of ETH remaining on-chain.
According to on-chain analyst Yu Jin, the KelpDAO hacker began laundering and transferring ETH yesterday afternoon, and by now should have laundered 34,500 ETH (worth $80 million).Most of this ETH was cross-chain swapped into BTC via THORChain, which consequently earned a significant amount in "toll fees":1. THORChain's trading volume surged to $360 million over the past 24 hours, compared to an average daily volume of only $20 million previously.2. THORChain's platform fee revenue reached $420,000 over the past 24 hours, whereas its daily fee income was only $5,000 before.
According to on-chain analyst Specter (@SpecterAnalyst), the North Korean hacking group TraderTraitor began laundering stolen funds from KelpDAO at approximately 3 a.m. Beijing time today—just three hours after the Arbitrum Council froze 30.7 ETH (approximately $71 million). The attackers split the remaining funds across three wallets, holding roughly 25,000 ETH (~$57.6 million), 25,700 ETH (~$59.2 million), and 25,000 ETH (~$57.9 million), respectively. The third wallet immediately initiated laundering operations and now holds only about 3,800 ETH (~$8 million). The majority of the funds were bridged to the Bitcoin network via THORChain, with approximately 99% flowing through this protocol. As a result, THORChain’s daily trading volume surged to $211 million—more than ten times its 30-day average—and generated roughly $189,000 in fees. During this laundering process, the illicit proceeds were also commingled with funds stolen in the BTC Turk (2025) and Bybit (2025) hacks. To date, approximately 442 BTC (~$33 million) linked to these incidents have been traced on the Bitcoin network, and over 400 addresses have been utilized throughout the entire laundering operation.
Odaily News According to monitoring by crypto analyst Ai Yi @ai_9684xtpa, the KelpDAO attacker has transferred 50,700 ETH to 2 new addresses, valued at approximately $118 million.
On-chain investigator ZachXBT updated that funds related to the KelpDAO attack have begun moving: approximately $1.5 million has been cross-chained from Ethereum Mainnet to the Bitcoin network via Thorchain, and roughly $78,000 has been transferred via Umbra. The attacking address initially sourced its funds from Tornado Cash, and fund laundering and cross-chain transfers are ongoing.
According to PeckShield’s monitoring, the KelpDAO attacker has transferred 75,700 ETH to two new addresses.
Odaily News KelpDAO stated in a post on X platform that it will continue to explore all feasible avenues to support rsETH holders and mitigate the impact of the related security incident on the DeFi ecosystem.It mentioned that over the past two days, the team has collaborated with the Arbitrum Security Council and multiple ecosystem participants, providing context on the incident and assisting with the assessment efforts, while also expressing gratitude for the coordination and support from teams like SEAL 911. Previously, the Arbitrum Security Council had frozen approximately 30,700 ETH, involving assets related to the KelpDAO attacker.
Odaily News According to on-chain analyst Yu Jin's monitoring, the Arbitrum chain project team has frozen the 30,766 ETH ($70.97 million) that the KelpDAO hacker had placed on the Arbitrum chain. Through technical means, they transferred these 30,766 ETH from the hacker's wallet to the address 0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000da0, which is controlled by the Arbitrum chain. After the recovery of these 30,766 ETH, the hacker still holds 75,700 ETH ($175 million) on the Ethereum chain.
According to an official Arbitrum announcement, the Arbitrum Security Council took emergency action at 11:26 PM ET on April 20, successfully freezing and transferring 30,766 ETH held at addresses associated with the KelpDAO vulnerability. This operation was conducted with assistance from law enforcement agencies, and the funds have been moved to an intermediate frozen wallet—rendering the original addresses unable to access the funds. The subsequent disposition of these funds will be coordinated by the Arbitrum governance mechanism in collaboration with relevant stakeholders. The Security Council stated that the entire operation had no impact whatsoever on any other on-chain state or Arbitrum users.
According to monitoring by PeckShield, the Kelp DAO attacker transferred 30,765 ETH (approximately $70.92 million) to a special address starting with 0x00000, suspected to be a burning action.
Michael Egorov (@newmichwill), founder of Curve Finance, posted that recent security incidents in the DeFi space—triggered by centralized failure points—have occurred frequently and severely damaged the industry’s reputation. Citing examples such as Aave users being unable to withdraw funds following the rsETH exploit and the LayerZero cross-chain bridge hack, he emphasized that problems must be prevented *before* they occur—not addressed only after damage is done. He called on the industry to jointly establish DeFi security standards, proposing that the Ethereum Foundation and Solana Foundation take the lead in collaborating with projects across ecosystems, auditing firms, and risk-assessment teams to develop principles and specifications for secure system design—and suggesting that lessons could be drawn from traditional finance’s approaches to safeguarding centralized nodes.
Aave risk service provider LlamaRisk has released an incident report: On April 18, 2026, the attacker exploited a vulnerability in Kelp’s LayerZero V2 Unichain-to-Ethereum rsETH routing (a 1-of-1 DVN configuration flaw), forged inbound packets, and illicitly released 116,500 rsETH from the Ethereum-side adapter. Of these, 89,567 rsETH were deposited as collateral into multiple Aave V3 markets—including Ethereum Core and Arbitrum—enabling the borrowing of approximately 82,650 WETH (valued at ~$191 million) and 821 wstETH. Currently, only 40,373 rsETH remain in the adapter, while the total claimable rsETH on the remote chain stands at 152,577—creating a substantial shortfall. Depending on the loss allocation methodology, Aave faces two potential bad-debt scenarios: - Scenario 1 (global pro-rata allocation): Estimated bad debt of ~$123.7 million, with Ethereum Core bearing the greatest pressure; - Scenario 2 (loss confined to L2s): Estimated bad debt of ~$230.1 million, with Mantle facing a WETH reserve shortfall of up to 71.45% and Arbitrum facing a 26.67% shortfall. Following the incident, Aave Protocol Guardians and Risk Administrators immediately froze rsETH/wrsETH reserves across all 11 affected markets.
Odaily News Lido posted on platform X stating that on April 18th, the Kelp cross-chain bridge was attacked, resulting in the theft of approximately 116,500 rsETH (worth about $292 million). Subsequently, the related assets were frozen on lending markets such as Aave.Its treasury product EarnETH has approximately a 9% risk exposure (about $21.6 million) through leveraged rsETH/ETH positions on Aave. Meanwhile, rising borrowing utilization is creating cost pressure on other strategies. The team is advancing deleveraging and reducing overall risk.Lido pointed out that the final impact of the rsETH positions depends on the subsequent handling by Kelp, LayerZero, and Aave, including loss sharing, asset recovery, and bad debt processing.Regarding risk mitigation, EarnETH can, if necessary, activate a $3 million "first-loss protection mechanism" (provided by the DAO treasury) to cover losses. The specific scale of its use is still pending further evaluation. Currently, the treasury has suspended deposits and withdrawals to ensure fairness and complete loss assessment. If the handling process is slow, redemption channels may be reopened based on the worst-case loss expectations.The official emphasized that stETH and wstETH are unaffected, and the core staking protocol was not involved in this incident.
According to monetsupply.eth, Spark’s Strategy Lead, in a post on X, Spark has long maintained a relatively high borrowing interest rate cap for its SparkLend ETH market. Although this policy caused many users to migrate to Aave—resulting in substantial loss of business and revenue—the current market liquidity crisis has validated the prudence of this strategy. Presently, Aave is experiencing severe liquidity shortages across multiple chains—including Ethereum Mainnet, Arbitrum, Polygon Plasma, Mantle, and Base—with ETH borrowing utilization reaching 100%. This has prevented depositors from withdrawing funds and hindered normal liquidation of ETH collateral. He warns that if the current liquidity crunch persists, a 15–20% drop in ETH’s price could expose Aave to widespread bad debt—compounded by the potential impact of the rsETH vulnerability incident.
According to on-chain analytics platform Lookonchain (@lookonchain), an OTC whale previously purchased 163,405 ETH (approximately $440 million) and 4,000 cbBTC (approximately $296 million). Due to the KelpDAO rsETH cross-chain bridge vulnerability, this whale was unable to withdraw ETH normally from Aave and was forced to discount-swap 7,438 aEthWETH (approximately $16.83 million) for 1,930 stETH and 5,272 ETH, incurring a loss of approximately 237 ETH (about $540,000). The whale has since withdrawn 98,032 wstETH (approximately $272 million) and 3,000 cbBTC (approximately $221.6 million) from Aave, leaving 10,000 ETH (approximately $22.8 million) still deposited in Aave.
Odaily News: A LayerZero cross-chain bridge related to Kelp DAO was hacked on Saturday, resulting in 116,500 rsETH worth $291 million flowing to a new wallet. The hacker used the illicitly obtained rsETH as collateral to borrow on Aave, causing the utilization rate of Aave's core lending pool to reach 100% and triggering a liquidity crunch. According to monitoring by 0xngmi, as of early Sunday, the net withdrawal amount from Aave had reached $6.2 billion. Kelp DAO has suspended the rsETH contracts on the Ethereum mainnet and several L2 networks. Affected by this, the price of the Aave token fell 16% to $90.13, and the price of Ethereum dropped 2% to $2,300. Currently, Justin Sun has posted on platform X attempting to negotiate with the hacker.
Odaily News Trader 0xSun posted stating that news-driven trading remains one of the more cost-effective strategies in the current crypto market, with its core lying in the directionality and volatility brought by events.Reviewing several recent events, including abnormal ETH transactions, Arc fee adjustments, TAO ecosystem changes, RAVE-related investigations, and the KelpDAO security incident, all triggered significant price fluctuations within a short period. He believes that participating in such opportunities relies on either the speed of information acquisition or the ability to judge the impact of events.Furthermore, he indicated that as the recent altcoin market has gradually cooled down, he has resumed the strategy of going long on BTC while hedging by shorting some altcoin assets. He believes that against the backdrop of relatively weak liquidity and the fading of certain narratives, the overall performance of altcoins may face relatively more pressure.
Odaily News: Sonic Labs co-founder and Flying Tulip founder Andre Cronje posted on platform X, stating that his team is continuing to investigate the L0/rsETH incident. Preliminary reports indicate that approximately $200 million worth of rsETH was stolen, possibly due to a private key leak or configuration error. The related assets were subsequently deposited into Aave as collateral to borrow ETH (due to insufficient rsETH liquidity).Andre Cronje pointed out that the affected positions are technically still overcollateralized. However, if bad debt occurs, Aave's token mechanism and Safety Module will serve as the first line of defense to absorb the risk. Nevertheless, Aave has no mechanism to subsidize user losses, as doing so could trigger a bank run. Currently, Aave holds approximately $7 billion in ETH with an outstanding borrowing amount of around $100 million, so the overall impact of this incident is limited. Furthermore, prioritizing user liquidity, Flying Tulip has withdrawn all its ETH from Aave to its fund management wrapper contract. This action was taken because Aave's available liquidity had fallen below its set minimum threshold.
According to on-chain analytics platform Lookonchain (@lookonchain), impacted by the KelpDAO incident, the attacker deposited rsETH into Aave and borrowed ETH, resulting in a bad debt on Aave. As a result, several whales have begun urgently withdrawing ETH from Aave. Currently, ETH utilization on Aave has risen to 100%.
According to on-chain analyst Yujin (@EmberCN), after the hacker borrowed a large amount of ETH from Aave by pledging illegally minted rsETH, multiple whale addresses sold AAVE on-chain, causing AAVE’s price to drop 15% that day. Among them, the Polymarket user “smaugvision” sold 20,015 AAVE at an average price of $102.9, worth approximately $2.06 million; address 0xFC5 sold 20,000 AAVE at an average price of $102.8, worth approximately $2.05 million; and address 0xA2E sold 19,665 AAVE at an average price of $99.2, worth approximately $1.95 million.