Overview of rsETH Hacker Incident Response by Various Protocols: MultiSig Pause of LayerZero OFT Cross-Chain Bridge, rsETH Still Frozen in Aave

BlockBeats News, April 20, Saturday: The rsETH LayerZero cross-chain bridge under Kelp DAO's liquidity re-staking was hacked, becoming the largest DeFi hack event of 2026 to date. The attacker manipulated LayerZero cross-chain messages to directly withdraw 116,500 rsETH from the bridge contract and deposited it into Aave and other lending platforms to borrow WETH, leading to a significant amount of unsecured bad debt risk. Here is an overview of the response measures by various DeFi protocols to the rsETH hack:

Aave has released the latest developments on the rsETH incident: rsETH on the Ethereum mainnet has full collateral support. rsETH remains frozen on Aave V3 and V4. The WETH reserve is also frozen in affected markets, including Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, Mantle, and Linea. Aave is actively verifying the information and assessing potential solutions.

Ethena has officially decided to extend the suspension period of the LayerZero OFT cross-chain bridge. Meanwhile, Ethena has released the latest reserve proof, confirming that the USDe collateralization ratio remains above 100%.

LayerZero has stated that it has fully understood the rsETH vulnerability incident and has been actively working on fixes with the KelpDAO team since the event occurred, while continuously monitoring the situation. All other applications remain secure. A comprehensive post-incident analysis report will be released jointly with KelpDAO once all information is gathered.

Fluid has announced the launch of an aWETH redemption protocol. The aWETH redemption protocol will allow ETH borrowers to: redeem into wstETH or weETH, restore liquidity instantly, and reduce liquidation risk. Users who have only borrowed ETH can fully redeem. For users with ETH collateral and other debts, the collateral will seamlessly convert to wstETH or weETH, while the debt remains unchanged. The protocol's initial capacity is limited to $1 billion in ETH.

Morpho has temporarily suspended the MORPHO OFT cross-chain bridge on Arbitrum until the root cause of the rsETH incident is identified. Morpho has stated that the smart contract is secure and operating normally as expected; the risk exposure is limited, with only about $1 million in ETH lent with rsETH as collateral, distributed across two isolated markets out of thousands of markets; since Morpho adopts a fully isolated market design, all other Vaults are unaffected.

Curve Finance has announced the suspension of Curve's LayerZero infrastructure, affecting: CRV bridging from the following chains: BNB, Sonic, Avalanche, Fantom, Etherlink, Kava (other chains still use native bridging); fast bridging of crvUSD (L2 slow bridging can still be used normally).

Reserve Official Announcement: It has been determined that Reserve DTF holders will be almost unaffected. RSR stakers in the Reserve protocol's USD3 and eUSD may receive protection as "first loss capital," but the impact is minimal, and the RSR overcollateralization is sufficient to cover it. ETH+ and bsdETH have no rsETH collateral at all, making them zero-risk. As a precaution, Reserve has temporarily paused the minting, rebalancing, and RSR unstaking for eUSD and USD3. The redemption function remains open as usual.

Maple Finance Official Announcement: All USDT provided on Aave Mantle by syrupUSDT has been withdrawn. syrupUSDC and syrupUSDT are not affected by the rsETH vulnerability.

Polygon Official Statement: Polygon has been actively monitoring the rsETH vulnerability: the Polygon Chain, Agglayer, and the entire ecosystem including Katana and Vaultbridge have not been impacted by this event.

EtherFi Official Announcement: The protocol's liquidity treasury is not affected by the Kelp rsETH event, and treasury users will not suffer any fund losses.

Hyperliquid Ecosystem DeFi Project Hyperwave Announcement: As a preventive measure, all LayerZero bridging of Hyperwave assets has been temporarily suspended.