Justin Sun Offers to Negotiate With KelpDAO Hacker After $292 Million Exploit
Tron founder Justin Sun publicly known as on the KelpDAO bridge hacker to negotiate a return of the stolen funds, warning {that a} $292 million loss may convey down each Aave and KelpDAO.
Sun’s attraction adopted the most important Decentralized Finance (DeFi) exploit of 2026, which drained 116,500 rsETH from KelpDAO’s cross-chain bridge on April 18.
Sun Moves Funds as Aave Takes the Hit
The attacker exploited a flaw in KelpDAO’s LayerZero-powered bridge, forging cross-chain messages to launch rsETH with out corresponding token burns.
The stolen tokens have been then deposited as collateral on Aave V3, the place the hacker borrowed large volumes of Wrapped Ether (WETH) against them.
Because the rsETH grew to become unbacked, the positions are effectively unliquidatable, leaving Aave with over $236 million in unhealthy debt.
Aave froze rsETH markets on each V3 and V4 inside hours. Aave founder Stani Kulechov confirmed the exploit originated outdoors Aave’s contracts.
On-chain knowledge exhibits Sun urgently withdrew 65,584 ETH, value roughly $154 million, from Aave and deposited it into Spark shortly after.
His whole Aave publicity has reportedly dropped to $380 million, whereas his Sky and Spark holdings have risen to $2.13 billion.
“OK — Kelpdao hacker, how a lot you need? Let’s simply discuss. With KelpDAO’s assist, after all. It’s merely not value it to sacrifice each Aave and KelpDAO and allow them to go down over this hack,” wrote Justin Sun in a put up.
Interoperability protocol Axelar additionally responded, expressing solidarity with LayerZero and urging the trade to undertake stronger bridge safety requirements.
Axelar pointed to the significance of multi-validator configurations, noting that Kelp’s single-validator setup might have enabled the breach.
The exploit overtakes the $285 million Drift Protocol hack from April 1 as the most important DeFi loss this 12 months.
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