Aave Faces $6 Billion Deposit Exodus After Kelp Hack Exposes DeFi Lender's Structural Vulnerabilities

Aave has witnessed a massive exodus of $6.6 billion in deposits, not due to a direct hack, but as a result of a cascade of events triggered by the Kelp hack. The protocol's total value locked plummeted from $26.4 billion on April 18 to approximately $20 billion by Sunday morning, according to DefiLlama. The AAVE token suffered a 16% decline to $92, while daily fees surged to $1.99 million as liquidations swept through the weekend. Depositors are fleeing because Aave is now carrying a liability it did not create. When hackers drained 116,500 rsETH from Kelp's bridge on Saturday, they used the stolen tokens as collateral on Aave V3 to borrow wrapped ether. On-chain trackers estimate the Aave-specific borrow to be around $196 million, with total positions across Aave, Compound, and Euler totaling approximately $236 million. Aave, the largest lending protocol in DeFi, allows users to deposit crypto to earn yield, while others borrow against collateral. Kelp, a liquid restaking protocol, takes ether already staked on Ethereum and routes it through a separate yield-generating system called EigenLayer, issuing a receipt token, rsETH, in exchange. This rsETH is what users trade and, critically, what some users posted on Aave as collateral to borrow against. On Saturday, hackers tricked Kelp's cross-chain bridge into releasing 116,500 rsETH, worth about $292 million, to an address they controlled. They then deposited the stolen rsETH onto Aave V3 as collateral and borrowed wrapped ether against it. Aave initially stated that the Umbrella reserve would cover any deficit but later softened its stance to 'explore paths to offset the deficit.' The concentration of Aave's loan book on Ethereum, with $14.24 billion of the $17.82 billion in outstanding borrows, explains why the damage is significant. WETH accounts for 39.49% of all loans on the protocol, meaning the attack hit the exact collateral-to-WETH pair that dominates Aave's book. Aave's founder, Stani Kulechov, said the exploit was external and the protocol's contracts were not compromised. However, Aave accepted a liquid restaking token as collateral, and that token's backing vanished on a bridge Aave does not control, leaving depositors vulnerable to losses. Liquid restaking tokens were whitelisted across every major lending protocol due to their yield and growing share of Ethereum's locked value. Risk models priced them as if they would hold peg under normal conditions, but none accounted for a scenario where the collateral goes to zero due to a bridge exploit on a chain Aave does not control. The token price is now reflecting the uncertainty surrounding whether Umbrella is sufficient to cover the hole and whether stkAAVE holders who back that reserve will absorb the loss.