The Kelp protocol has restored the collateral for the rsETH token five weeks after the hack. The team sent the final tranche of 20,373 rsETH to the LayerZero smart contract.
The final tranche of 20,373.72 rsETH has been sent to the rsETH OFT adapter earlier today. This closes the operational part of the rsETH recovery plan.
— Kelp (@KelpDAO) May 25, 2026
The $293 million incident triggered a liquidity crisis in the DeFi sector. The attackers used the stolen 116,500 rsETH as collateral on the Aave platform to secure loans. This resulted in the creation of $190 million in "bad debt" and a mass withdrawal of funds from the lending protocol.
Funds for Kelp's recovery were raised with the support of the DeFi United initiative, involving other crypto projects in the implementation of the plan.
The first tranche of 25,000 rsETH was received on May 13, allowing the resumption of cross-chain bridges between the Ethereum mainnet and L2 solutions. The following day, developers opened withdrawals. Burning and reward distribution are functioning normally.
The Kelp hack contributed to the decline in the total value locked in the Aave protocol, which dropped from $26.3 billion to $17.7 billion.
It’s worth noting that April saw a record number of hacks in the crypto industry for the month, with over 20 incidents resulting in losses of $651 million.
In May, Ekubo, TrustedVolumes, THORChain, Verus, Echo, and Map Protocol were also targeted by hacker attacks.