Kelp DAO Disputes LayerZero's Account of $290 Million Exploit

A recent crypto exploit has sparked a blame game between Kelp DAO and LayerZero, with Kelp set to dispute LayerZero's post-mortem of the $290 million disaster. According to a source familiar with the matter, Kelp plans to argue that the compromised verifier was part of LayerZero's own infrastructure and that the setup it was faulted for running was LayerZero's onboarding default. The incident occurred when attackers drained 116,500 rsETH, worth about $290 million, from Kelp's LayerZero-powered bridge by poisoning the servers that LayerZero's verifier relied on to check transactions. Kelp claims that the attack was a 'sophisticated state-sponsored attack' that compromised two of LayerZero's own servers, which were then used to flood the backup servers with junk traffic. The source contested LayerZero's framing of the '1/1 configuration' as a fringe choice made against guidance, stating that LayerZero's own quickstart guide and default GitHub configuration point to a 1/1 DVN setup. Security researchers have also questioned LayerZero's account, with one stating that the reference setup ships with single-source verification defaults across every major chain. Chainlink community manager Zach Rynes accused LayerZero of 'deflecting responsibility' for its own compromised infrastructure and throwing Kelp under the bus for trusting a setup LayerZero itself supported. In response, Kelp DAO has confirmed that the 1-of-1 DVN setup at the center of the incident reflects LayerZero's documented default configuration, and has called for a 'shared and accurate account of what happened' to make the necessary fixes.