Buy Crypto- Markets
Futures- Spot
- Copy Trade
- Earn
- More
The biggest DeFi heist of 2026, hackers easily took advantage of Aave
Author: Xiao Bing, Shenchao TechFlow
On the evening of April 18 at 17:35 (UTC), a wallet that had laundered money through Tornado Cash sent a cross-chain message to the LayerZero EndpointV2 contract.
The message's meaning was simple: a user on a certain chain wanted to transfer rsETH back to the Ethereum mainnet. LayerZero faithfully conveyed the instruction according to the protocol design. The bridging contract deployed by Kelp DAO on the mainnet also executed the release faithfully as designed.
116,500 rsETH, worth approximately $292 million at the time, was transferred in a single transaction to an address controlled by the attacker.
The problem is that no one on the other chain had ever deposited this rsETH. This "cross-chain request" was fabricated out of thin air; LayerZero believed it, and Kelp's bridge believed it.
Forty-six minutes later, Kelp's emergency multi-signature finally hit the pause button. By this time, the attacker had already completed the latter half of the action, using the stolen, essentially uncollateralized rsETH to collateralize in Aave V3, borrowing approximately $236 million worth of wETH.
This is the largest DeFi theft of 2026 so far, surpassing the Drift protocol, which was attacked by North Korean hackers on April 1 by several million dollars, but what truly sends chills down the spine of the industry is not just the amount.
How the Attack Happened: Three Bets from 17:35 to 18:28
Let's restore the timeline.
17:35 UTC, the first success. The attacker called the lzReceive function on the LayerZero EndpointV2 contract, and a wallet funded by Tornado Cash sent a fabricated cross-chain data packet to Kelp's bridging contract. The contract verification passed, and 116,500 rsETH was released to the attacker's address. A single transaction. Clean.
18:21 UTC, Kelp's emergency pause multi-signature froze the core rsETH contracts on the mainnet and multiple L2s. 46 minutes after the attack occurred.
18:26 and 18:28 UTC, the attacker initiated two more attempts, each time attempting to withdraw 40,000 rsETH (approximately $10 million) with a LayerZero data packet. Both were reverted; the contract had already been frozen, but the attacker was clearly still trying to siphon off the remaining liquidity.
From the first success to Kelp's public statement, nearly three hours elapsed.
Kelp's first X post was not sent until 20:10 UTC, and the wording was very restrained: suspicious cross-chain activity involving rsETH was detected, the rsETH contracts on the mainnet and multiple L2s had been paused, and they were collaborating with LayerZero, Unichain, auditors, and external security experts for root cause analysis.
However, earlier than the official statement, ZachXBT, an on-chain detective, raised the alarm in his Telegram channel before 3 PM Eastern Time, listing six wallet addresses related to the theft and pointing out that the attack wallet had prepared funds through Tornado Cash before starting its actions. He did not name Kelp DAO, but on-chain analysts connected the addresses in just a few hours.
This was a **premeditated operation executed
You may also like
Consumer-grade Crypto Global Survey: Users, Revenue, and Track Distribution
Prediction Markets Under Bias
Stolen: $290 million, Three Parties Refusing to Acknowledge, Who Should Foot the Bill for the KelpDAO Incident Resolution?
ASTEROID Pumped 10,000x in Three Days, Is Meme Season Back on Ethereum?
ChainCatcher Hong Kong Themed Forum Highlights: Decoding the Growth Engine Under the Integration of Crypto Assets and Smart Economy
Why can this institution still grow by 150% when the scale of leading crypto VCs has shrunk significantly?
Anthropic's $1 trillion, compared to DeepSeek's $100 billion
Geopolitical Risk Persists, Is Bitcoin Becoming a Key Barometer?
Annualized 11.5%, Wall Street Buzzing: Is MicroStrategy's STRC Bitcoin's Savior or Destroyer?
An Obscure Open Source AI Tool Alerted on Kelp DAO's $292 million Bug 12 Days Ago
Mixin has launched USTD-margined perpetual contracts, bringing derivative trading into the chat scene.
The privacy-focused crypto wallet Mixin announced today the launch of its U-based perpetual contract (a derivative priced in USDT). Unlike traditional exchanges, Mixin has taken a new approach by "liberating" derivative trading from isolated matching engines and embedding it into the instant messaging environment.
Users can directly open positions within the app with leverage of up to 200x, while sharing positions, discussing strategies, and copy trading within private communities. Trading, social interaction, and asset management are integrated into the same interface.
Based on its non-custodial architecture, Mixin has eliminated friction from the traditional onboarding process, allowing users to participate in perpetual contract trading without identity verification.
The trading process has been streamlined into five steps:
· Choose the trading asset
· Select long or short
· Input position size and leverage
· Confirm order details
· Confirm and open the position
The interface provides real-time visualization of price, position, and profit and loss (PnL), allowing users to complete trades without switching between multiple modules.
Mixin has directly integrated social features into the derivative trading environment. Users can create private trading communities and interact around real-time positions:
· End-to-end encrypted private groups supporting up to 1024 members
· End-to-end encrypted voice communication
· One-click position sharing
· One-click trade copying
On the execution side, Mixin aggregates liquidity from multiple sources and accesses decentralized protocol and external market liquidity through a unified trading interface.
By combining social interaction with trade execution, Mixin enables users to collaborate, share, and execute trading strategies instantly within the same environment.
Mixin has also introduced a referral incentive system based on trading behavior:
· Users can join with an invite code
· Up to 60% of trading fees as referral rewards
· Incentive mechanism designed for long-term, sustainable earnings
This model aims to drive user-driven network expansion and organic growth.
Mixin's derivative transactions are built on top of its existing self-custody wallet infrastructure, with core features including:
· Separation of transaction account and asset storage
· User full control over assets
· Platform does not custody user funds
· Built-in privacy mechanisms to reduce data exposure
The system aims to strike a balance between transaction efficiency, asset security, and privacy protection.
Against the background of perpetual contracts becoming a mainstream trading tool, Mixin is exploring a different development direction by lowering barriers, enhancing social and privacy attributes.
The platform does not only view transactions as execution actions but positions them as a networked activity: transactions have social attributes, strategies can be shared, and relationships between individuals also become part of the financial system.
Mixin's design is based on a user-initiated, user-controlled model. The platform neither custodies assets nor executes transactions on behalf of users.
This model aligns with a statement issued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on April 13, 2026, titled "Staff Statement on Whether Partial User Interface Used in Preparing Cryptocurrency Securities Transactions May Require Broker-Dealer Registration."
The statement indicates that, under the premise where transactions are entirely initiated and controlled by users, non-custodial service providers that offer neutral interfaces may not need to register as broker-dealers or exchanges.
Mixin is a decentralized, self-custodial privacy wallet designed to provide secure and efficient digital asset management services.
Its core capabilities include:
· Aggregation: integrating multi-chain assets and routing between different transaction paths to simplify user operations
· High liquidity access: connecting to various liquidity sources, including decentralized protocols and external markets
· Decentralization: achieving full user control over assets without relying on custodial intermediaries
· Privacy protection: safeguarding assets and data through MPC, CryptoNote, and end-to-end encrypted communication
Mixin has been in operation for over 8 years, supporting over 40 blockchains and more than 10,000 assets, with a global user base exceeding 10 million and an on-chain self-custodied asset scale of over $1 billion.
$600 million stolen in 20 days, ushering in the era of AI hackers in the crypto world
Vitalik's 2026 Hong Kong Web3 Summit Speech: Ethereum's Ultimate Vision as the "World Computer" and Future Roadmap
On the same day Aave introduced rsETH, why did Spark decide to exit?
Full Post-Mortem of the KelpDAO Incident: Why Did Aave, Which Was Not Compromised, End Up in Crisis Situation?
After a $290 million DeFi liquidation, is the security promise still there?
ZachXBT's post ignites RAVE nearing zero, what is the truth behind the insider control?
App