A staggering $292 million exploit has sent shockwaves through the cryptocurrency industry, exposing weaknesses in DeFi infrastructure and sparking concerns about the ripple effects on lending protocols. The attack, which occurred over the weekend, appears to have targeted Kelp's rsETH token, a yield-bearing version of ether, and the mechanism used to transfer assets between blockchains. The perpetrator manipulated the system to create a large amount of unbacked tokens, which were then used as collateral to borrow and drain real assets from lending markets, primarily from Aave, the largest decentralized crypto lender. This incident is the latest blow to DeFi, coming just weeks after the $285 million exploit of Solana-based protocol Drift, further eroding investor trust in the nearly $90 billion crypto sector.
The attack exploited a LayerZero bridge component, a critical piece of infrastructure that enables assets to move across different blockchains. According to Charles Guillemet, CTO of hardware wallet maker Ledger, the system relied on a single-signer setup, allowing just one entity to approve transactions.
This setup enabled the attacker to create unbacked tokens, which were then deployed to lending protocols, mostly Aave, to borrow real ETH against. The maneuver has left DeFi lending platforms holding collateral that may be difficult to unwind, while valuable and liquid assets have already been drained. As a result, Aave and other lending protocols may be sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars in questionable collateral and bad debt, raising concerns of a potential 'bank run' dynamic as users rush to withdraw funds. The incident has also raised questions about the security of DeFi protocols and the need for more robust measures to prevent such attacks in the future.
With the trust in DeFi protocols already eroded, the industry is bracing for a potentially devastating year, with 2026 likely to be the worst year for hacks, according to Guillemet.