KelpDAO Exploit Rattles DeFi; Aave TVL Slides 16.78%

ASTEROID's market capitalization climbed to a new peak of $170 million. Iran's deputy foreign minister said the country will never hand over enriched uranium to the United States. Kelp said it has paused rsETH contracts across mainnet and several Layer 2 networks and has launched an investigation into the attack. RAVE dropped below $1, plunging more than 96% on the day. Spark's head of strategy warned that risk spillovers from the rsETH security incident are intensifying and could spark cascading liquidations across DeFi. Aave's total value locked fell to $21.966 billion, down 16.78% in 24 hours. etherFi said it has suspended LayerZero bridging and frozen access to multiple assets, adding that rsETH risk has not yet been directly exposed. Curve's founder said the KelpDAO exploit has led to bad debt on Aave, highlighting the risks of non-isolated lending. Lido paused earnETH deposits in response to the Kelp security incident, while stETH and the core staking protocol remain unaffected. Andre Cronje said Aave has removed its subsidy-based user loss mechanism and has withdrawn ETH to a vault management contract. The founder of ACI said the Frontier staking program has been terminated, with ETH transferred to the Aave DAO for risk management.