Lending platform Aave has raised about $160 million it needs to cover the $200 million in bad debt left behind by the year’s largest decentralized finance (DeFi) exploit, Arkham posted on X on Saturday.
“$AAVE have so far raised $160M to cover the bad debt from the Kelp DAO Exploit, at defiunited.eth,” the blockchain analytics platform wrote. “The largest contributors are Mantle and $AAVE DAO, who together raised 55,000 $ETH or $127M.”
Last week, Aave and several major crypto firms announced a coordinated recovery effort to stabilize DeFi markets after a $292 million security breach left the crypto borrowing sector’s largest lender facing a financial crisis.
Called DeFi United and led by Aave service providers, the effort’s goal is to restore support for rsETH, the yield-bearing derivative token of ether ($ETH) at the core of the exploit.
“I’m personally contributing 5,000 $ETH to DeFi United as we continue working together with partners,” said Aave founder Stani Kulecho. His personal contribution at ether’s current price of roughly $2,346 is worth $11,730,000.
The exploit is traced back to a KelpDAO integration vulnerability with LayerZero, where an attacker minted 116,500 unbacked rsETH tokens. That left Aave with impaired collateral, triggering a run on deposits as lenders rushed to exit, ultimately withdrawing $10 billion.
The effort to erase the bad debt is focused mostly on stabilizing the system with a coordinated bailout to recapitalize rsETH and mitigate losses.
The second-largest exploit this year took place late March, when an attacker drained at least $270 million from the Drift Protocol on Solana by abusing a legitimate feature called ‘durable nonces,’ rather than exploiting a code bug or stolen keys.