Aave | Crypto

A New York judge has ordered supplemental briefings because Aave did not adequately outline how compounding losses could occur if the restraining notice remains in place. A New York judge has delayed a decision on Aave’s emergency bid to unfreeze $71 million worth of crypto tied to victims of the $293 million Kelp DAO hack, asking for additional information ahead of a new hearing in June.  Aave has sought to use $71 million in ETH that Arbitrum froze to assist with recovery efforts following the Kelp DAO hack, one of the worst DeFi hacks this year. However, US law firm Gerstein Harrow LLP filed a restraining notice at the start of May, arguing its clients have a claim to the funds. Aave then filed an emergency motion to get the funds unlocked, arguing that user liquidations and potential DeFi market destabilization could occur if the funds are not unlocked soon.    Read more

A Manhattan judge modified a restraining notice to let Arbitrum DAO move $71 million in frozen Ether to Aave, while preserving terrorism victims’ legal claim on the funds. A Manhattan federal judge has allowed Arbitrum DAO to move $71 million in frozen Ether to Aave, clearing the path for the DeFi protocol’s recovery effort following a North Korea-linked exploit. Judge Margaret Garnett of the Southern District of New York issued the order on Friday, modifying a restraining notice that had locked the assets inside Arbitrum DAO. The modification permits an onchain governance vote to send the funds to a wallet controlled by Aave LLC, and explicitly protects anyone who participates in the transfer from being held in violation of the freeze. The order still keeps the terrorism victims’ legal claim on the funds, meaning Aave can’t use the funds freely and could be forced to hand them over if the court ultimately rules in the terrorism victims’ favor. Read more

Judge Margaret Garnett allowed frozen exploit funds on Arbitrum to move to Aave, but the legal freeze follows the assets as terrorism plaintiffs continue their claim.

Aave filed an emergency motion last week to free millions in frozen ETH from a restraining order issued against the Arbitrum DAO, turning what began as a coordinated exploit recovery into a court dispute. Aave LLC said the restraining notice was served on Arbitrum DAO on May 1 and seeks to seize approximately $71 million […] The post Aave says creditors are trying to seize stolen ETH before victims get their $71M back appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Aave argued that a thief doesn’t gain lawful ownership of property by stealing it and that Gerstein Harrow’s legal argument “defies logic, common sense and the law.” Decentralized finance protocol Aave filed an emergency motion on Monday in New York to vacate a restraining notice from a US law firm aimed at blocking Arbitrum DAO from transferring 30,766 frozen Ether to the victims of the Kelp exploit.  Gerstein Harrow LLP served Arbitrum DAO with a restraining notice on Friday, arguing its clients are owed over $877 million in default judgments against North Korea. The law firm claims the North Korean hacker group behind the Kelp exploit had possession of the tokens, giving its clients a legal claim over the Ether. Aave filed the emergency motion in a New York district court, arguing that a thief doesn’t gain lawful ownership of property by stealing it. It also argued that North Korea is only suspected of being part of the theft, and that the law firm's argument “defies logic, common sense and the law.” Read ...

The response to the DeFi recovery fund has quickly extended beyond Aave, and in some cases began with direct outreach.

AAVE, the native token of the Aave DeFi platform, is now available on the Solana blockchain network. The move will give Solana users access to one of the largest lending protocols in decentralized finance without leaving the network. This came less than two days after the Solana Foundation revealed that it would deploy part of […] The post Latest $290M exploit hit DeFi so hard it forced Aave onto Solana as part of rescue efforts appeared first on CryptoSlate.

More than $21 million in contributions has been made to the "DeFi United" relief effort so far, with another $215 million to be potentially allocated if certain governance proposals succeed. Aave Labs has proposed that the decentralized autonomous organization behind Arbitrum unfreeze $73.5 million in Ether tied to the Kelp DAO attack and to direct those funds to “DeFi United,” a fund aimed at restoring rsETH and compensating its holders. Last week, the Arbitrum Security Council moved to freeze 30,765 Ether (ETH) held in a wallet connected to the $293 million Kelp exploit.  In a proposal posted Saturday on the Arbitrum governance forum, Aave Labs said directing those funds to a planned remediation effort would “restore normal conditions for Arbitrum users” and the wider ecosystem and that the Ether on Arbitrum “represents a material contribution” toward restoring the Kelp DAO restaked ETH (rsETH) token. Read more

Blockchain analytics platform Arkham said that the largest contributors are Mantle and Aave DAO, having raised a combined $127 million.

Industry players are coordinating a recovery effort as the year's biggest crypto theft rattled Aave, with Lido and EtherFi being firsts to offer aid.

Aave’s supplied balance has tanked since the Kelp DAO bridge exploit, as users pull funds amid uncertainty over how much of the rsETH-linked shortfall the protocol will ultimately absorb. Aave, the largest decentralized lending protocol, has seen around $15 billion in deposits withdrawn since the Kelp Dao exploit on Saturday.  Total value supplied to Aave fell from $45.8 billion on Saturday to $30.8 billion on Wednesday, according to Aavescan data. The decline followed an attack that drained about 116,500 restaked Ether (rsETH), worth roughly $293 million, from Kelp DAO’s LayerZero-powered rsETH bridge. The exploiter then used part of the stolen funds to borrow on Aave. Read more

Funds leaving Aave are splitting across safer lending, simpler ETH exposure and off-chain yield, with stablecoins acting as a temporary refuge.

Aave published a report outlining two possible outcomes: around $123 million in losses if damage is shared across all rsETH, or up to $230 million if confined to Layer 2s, with the final impact depending on how Kelp DAO allocates the shortfall.

LayerZero said that Kelp’s DVN setup allowed the $290 million exploit, as investors questioned which protocol would step up to cover the shortfall. Interoperability protocol LayerZero claims that an inadequate setup tied to Kelp’s decentralized verifier network (DVN) enabled malicious actors to steal $290 million from Kelp DAO, adding that preliminary signs point to North Korea-linked threat actors. An attacker drained about 116,500 Restaked ETH (rsETH), worth as much as $293 million at the time, from Kelp DAO’s LayerZero-powered rsETH bridge on Saturday. LayerZero said Monday that the exploit stemmed from a single point of failure in Kelp’s setup, which relied on a single LayerZero DVN as the only verified path, despite LayerZero previously advising them against this. Read more

The AAVE token fell 16% and deposits fled the protocol after attackers used drained rsETH as collateral to borrow wrapped ether, leaving Aave to quantify how much bad debt it is now carrying.

Aptos (APT), up 3.8% since Tuesday, joined Aave (AAVE) as a top performer.

Aave commands DeFi lending, with DefiLlama showing $24.51 billion in total value locked and $17.526 billion in borrowed funds. The margin against Morpho, its closest rival, is roughly 4.1 times. Spark, the third-largest competitor, sits at $967.52 million in borrowed funds. Aave ended 2025 with 61.5% active loan market share and 52.4% lending TVL share, […] The post Aave’s $25 billion lending empire faces a real test as key contributors exit appeared first on CryptoSlate.

A key sticking point is Aave’s V4 upgrade, which introduces a new architecture and significantly expands the scope of risk management.

A Bank of Canada staff paper found Aave V3 avoided bad debt in 2024, but said the model pushed losses onto borrowers during liquidations. A Bank of Canada staff paper found that Aave V3 reported zero non-performing loans in 2024, with overcollateralization and automated liquidations helping prevent lender losses in its Ethereum lending market. Using transaction-level data from Jan. 27, 2023, to May 6, 2025, the study found that positions were typically liquidated before collateral values fell below outstanding debt, helping contain lender losses across the sample. But the model came with a tradeoff, the paper said. While it protected lenders from unrecovered losses, it also shifted risk onto borrowers and constrained capital efficiency compared with traditional lending systems. Read more

The upgrade has been in development for about two years and is designed to make it easier to use Aave for a wider range of lending and borrowing activities.