arbitrum-freezes-eth-kelp-dao-exploit
Arbitrum freezes $71 million worth of ETH stolen in Kelp DAO exploit
The Arbitrum Security Council has frozen 30,766 ETH held in an address on Arbitrum One linked to the Kelp DAO exploit.Arbitrum said the frozen funds will only be moved by further action through Arbitrum governance.
2026-04-21 Source:theblock.co

The Arbitrum Security Council has frozen 30,766 ETH, worth about $71.1 million, held in an address on Arbitrum One linked to the $292 million Kelp DAO exploit over the weekend.

In a Tuesday post on X, Arbitrum said the security council has moved the funds to an intermediary frozen wallet, adding that the action did not affect other chain state and Arbitrum users.

The funds will remain frozen unless further action is approved through Arbitrum governance, the team said.

"The Security Council acted with input from law enforcement as to the exploiter's identity, and, at all times, weighed its commitment to the security and integrity of the Arbitrum community without impacting any Arbitrum users or applications," said the statement. The Block reached out to Arbitrum for further information.

The move follows a major exploit on Saturday involving Kelp DAO, a LayerZero-powered cross-chain bridge, which resulted in the loss of 116,500 rsETH tokens worth roughly $292 million.

Preliminary findings from LayerZero suggested that the attack was likely linked to North Korean hacking group Lazarus.

LayerZero has also criticized Kelp DAO's use of a 1-of-1 decentralized verified network (DVN) configuration, arguing that it introduced a single point of failure by lacking independent verification to detect a fraudulent cross-chain message. 

Kelp DAO pushed back on the statement, saying that the 1-of-1 DVN setup was shipped as the default configuration at LayerZero.


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