Sun Pleads for Talks After $292M DeFi Heist

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In the manner of a provincial actor, Justin Sun, founder of Tron, addressed the KelpDAO bridge hacker, urging a return of the pilfered funds and remarking that such a loss could topple both Aave and KelpDAO-because nothing sobers a room like shared ruin.

Sun’s appeal followed the largest 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 miscreant found a flaw in KelpDAO’s LayerZero-powered bridge, forging cross-chain messages to free rsETH without burning the tokens.

The stolen tokens were then placed as collateral on Aave V3, where the rogue borrowed vast sums of Wrapped Ether against them, as one borrows bread when the bakery is about to close.

Because rsETH stood unbacked, the positions were effectively unliquidatable, leaving Aave with more than $236 million in bad debt.

Aave froze rsETH markets on both V3 and V4 with the alacrity of a man who has misplaced his spectacles, while Stani Kulechov, founder, assured that the breach began outside Aave’s own rooms.

rsETH has been frozen on Aave V3 and V4, the asset does not have any borrowing power as a measure due to KelpDAO bridge exploit that happened outside of Aave. Both Aave V3 and V4 does not have further exposure to rsETH.

– Stani (@StaniKulechov) April 18, 2026

On-chain whispers tell of Sun swiftly drawing 65,584 ETH, about $154 million at the time, from Aave and sliding it into Spark shortly thereafter.

His total exposure to Aave allegedly fell to around $380 million, while his Sky and Spark holdings swelled to about $2.13 billion.

“OK – Kelpdao hacker, how much you want? Let’s just talk. With KelpDAO’s help, of course. It’s simply not worth it to sacrifice both Aave and KelpDAO and let them go down over this hack,” wrote Justin Sun in a post.

Interoperability protocol Axelar weighed in with a sober nod to LayerZero and urged the industry to rigour up its bridge security standards.

Axelar called attention to the necessity of multiple validators, hinting that Kelp’s solitary validator arrangement perhaps opened the door.

Every hacking and stolen money incident harms the trust users place on our blockchain systems as a whole and delays adoption of the global worldwide ledger we’re envisioning. We stand with the @LayerZero_Core team as they’re navigating this difficult situation and rebuilding…

– Axelar Network (@axelar) April 19, 2026

This mischief surpasses the Drift Protocol loss of 285 million from April 1, becoming the year’s largest DeFi wound.

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2026-04-20 00:36