The decentralized lending platform Aave has raised over $207 million (equivalent to 90,000 ETH) to compensate for the hopeless debt incurred after the largest hack in the DeFi sector in 2026 — the attack on KelpDAO.
This is reported by Business • Media
Key Players in the Recovery
According to the analytical platform Arkham, Mantle and Aave DAO played a key role in the fundraising, jointly providing 55,000 ETH, exceeding $127 million. As a result of the KelpDAO hack, hundreds of millions of dollars were withdrawn from the platform, threatening the stability of the DeFi protocol and causing a significant liquidity drain.
“I am personally contributing 5,000 ETH to DeFi United as we continue to work together with partners.”
DeFi United Initiative and Industry Support
To address the aftermath of the attack, the DeFi United initiative was created, led by Aave providers. The main goal is to restore trust in rsETH and stabilize the market. Key steps of the initiative include recapitalizing the system, restoring support for rsETH, and coordinating actions among leading market participants.
Significant contributions to the recovery have also been made by leading players in the Ethereum ecosystem. Consensys and its founder Joseph Lubin provided up to 30,000 ETH in financial support for the recovery of rsETH, while Sharplink is involved in the strategic oversight of the process.
In the last 24 hours, the trading volume of the AAVE asset on cryptocurrency exchanges exceeded $300 million, which is 34% higher than the previous day, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
In comparison, the second largest incident in 2026 was the attack on Drift Protocol in the Solana network, where the attacker exploited the durable nonces feature and withdrew at least $270 million, bypassing standard code vulnerabilities and key compromises.