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Justin Sun Offers Negotiation with KelpDAO Hackers After $US$292 Million Exploit
Tron founder Justin Sun openly invites KelpDAO bridge hackers to negotiate the return of stolen funds, warning that a loss of US$292 million could bring down both Aave and KelpDAO.
Sun's call comes after the largest Decentralized Finance (DeFi) exploit in 2026, which drained 116,500 rsETH from the cross-chain KelpDAO bridge on April 18.
Sun Moves Funds as Aave Bears Losses
The attack exploited a vulnerability in the KelpDAO bridge supported by LayerZero, forging cross-chain messages to release rsETH without proper token burning procedures.
The stolen tokens were then used by hackers as collateral on Aave V3, where they borrowed large amounts of Wrapped Ether (WETH) backed by those tokens.
Since the rsETH collateral was no longer supported, the position became practically unliquidatable, leaving Aave with bad debt exceeding US$236 million.
Aave immediately froze the rsETH markets in V3 and V4 within hours. Aave founder Stani Kulechov confirmed that the exploit originated from outside the Aave contracts.
On-chain data shows Sun quickly withdrew 65,584 ETH, worth about US$154 million, from Aave and transferred it directly to Spark after the incident.
Sun's exposure on Aave is now reported to have decreased to US$380 million, while his holdings in Sky and Spark increased to US$2.13 billion.
“Okay — KelpDAO hackers, how much do you want? Let’s talk nicely. Of course, with the help of KelpDAO. There’s no point in sacrificing both Aave and KelpDAO and letting them fall because of this hack,” Justin Sun wrote in a post.
The interoperability protocol Axelar also responded, expressing solidarity with LayerZero and urging the industry to start implementing stronger bridge security standards.
Axelar highlighted the importance of multi-validator configurations, while noting that the single-validator system used by Kelp may have enabled this leak.
This incident surpasses the US$285 million Drift Protocol hack on April 1 as the biggest DeFi loss of the year.