DeFi United unveils plan to restore rsETH after $292 million Kelp DAO exploit

DeFi United, a coalition of DeFi ecosystem participants, has published a technical plan to restore full backing for Kelp DAO’s rsETH following the $292 million exploit.

The April 18 exploit, widely attributed to North Korea’s Lazarus Group, targeted Kelp DAO’s rsETH bridge with a forged message, allowing the attacker to mint 116,500 unbacked rsETH tokens. Around 107,000 rsETH ended up in lending positions across Aave, resulting in substantial bad debt on the protocol.

Led by Aave, dozens of DeFi protocols contributed funds to the DeFi United initiative to mitigate the wider industry impact, raising over $300 million in ETH.

As the initiative has gathered sufficient ETH commitments, Aave shared that DeFi United is ready to launch the restoration process.

Restoration

“The restoration process involves converting the committed ETH into rsETH in tranches, which will then be transferred to the affected lockbox contract, allowing the bridge to securely resume full operation,” the coalition said in a statement.

The plan is subject to obtaining relevant governance approvals, execution timelines, and execution of definitive agreements, it added.

In parallel with the rsETH restoration, the recovery plan aims to clear the eight affected positions across the markets on Aave Ethereum Core and Arbitrum, which is a necessary step to recover roughly 13,000 ETH in funds on Aave.

This process involves a controlled liquidation sequence, in which the rsETH oracle price will be temporarily adjusted to allow efficient liquidation of the eight affected positions. The liquidated rsETH collateral would be moved to a DeFi United-controlled multisig, redeemed for ETH through KelpDAO, and subsequently used to repay any temporary deficits created in the Aave markets.

Compound, which was also affected by the exploit, is expected to take a similar step to clear the attacker’s position. This would recover approximately 16,776 ETH worth of funds.

“This final phase of the restoration process involves unpausing and unfreezing rsETH and ETH across all affected instances, and restoring the Loan-to-Value (LTV) ratios for ETH and any other assets whose configurations were temporarily adjusted,” the statement added.

Risks

The plan, designed to restore rsETH without socializing losses, does carry risks.

A key concern is that deployment of the restoration plan is contingent on finalizing agreements and obtaining governance approvals, during which the attacker could attempt to interfere.

“Deliberate interference by the attacker could result in incomplete deficit accrual, requiring additional liquidation steps to fully resolve the positions,” the statement said.

It also said that new security measures on LayerZero and Kelp DAO following the exploit remain “in production,” meaning they have not yet been battle-tested, and security risks may remain. The statement explained that this is why the ETH-to-rsETH conversion and lockbox deposits will be carried out in several tranches.

“The successful coordinated execution of these steps as planned ensures that rsETH backing is fully restored, and all affected markets are stabilized,” the statement said. “Progress will be communicated publicly as recovery efforts advance.”