Ethereum liquid staking protocol Kelp DAO says its re-stakeable Ether token has been reinstated within five weeks after the protocol was exploited by North Korean group Lazarus for $293 million on April 18.
Kelp DAO sent by October on Monday that the final tranche of 20,373.7 Kelp DAO re-stakeable ETH tokens (rsETH) had been transferred sent to the LayerZero shrewd contract responsible for locking, minting, burning and releasing rsETH during cross-chain transfers.
“This concludes the operational part of the rsETH recovery plan,” Kelp said. Several cryptographic protocols contributed funds to support restore rsETH support as part of the DeFi United initiative.
Source: Stani Kulekhov
The Kelp DAO hack in April sent a ripple effect across the crypto lending market, disrupting billions of dollars in liquidity and re-exposing concerns about the interconnectedness of decentralized finance protocols.
Aave suffered the most as the Kelp DAO attacker placed a vast portion of the stolen 116,500 rsETH as collateral on its lending platform to borrow wrapped Ether, leaving $190 million in bad debt and triggering a wave of withdrawals.
The Kelp DAO hack was one of 25 cryptocurrency hacks in April that resulted in a total of $630 million in losses, the worst month since February 2025, when cryptocurrency exchange Bybit was hacked for a record $1.5 billion.
The first tranche of 25,000 rsETH has been transferred transferred On May 13, it will enable the reopening of the rsETH bridge between the Ethereum mainnet and the blockchain’s Layer 2 networks.
Kelp reopened withdrawals for rsETH the next day and he said on Tuesday that rsETH mint, redemption and reward operations are “operating normally.”
Aave’s TVL bleeding stopped but did not return to normal
The Kelp DAO exploit contributed to Aave’s total locked value dropping from $26.4 billion to less than $14 billion, losing its long-held position as TVL’s largest DeFi protocol.
Related: Crypto hackers have stolen $17 billion in the last 10 years: DefiLlama
DefiLlama data shows that net outflows from Aave’s credit markets have declined over the past month.
However, Aave’s TVL shows no signs of recovery and has been hovering between $13.9 billion and $15.1 billion since about a week after the incident.
Source: Aave change in TVL in 2026 Source: DefiLlama
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