Shocked! Arbitrum Stops a KelpDAO Hacker From Plundering 30,766 ETH – Find Out Who’s Watching

by

Arbitrum’s Security Council has sprung the freeze on 30,766 ETH tied to the KelpDAO blow‑up.

They said they acted after talking to the cops about who the culprit was.

Arbitrum Council Moves Money To A Wallet‑Only Governance Can Unlock

BeInCrypto reported that the baddies drained about 116,500 rsETH – roughly $292 million – from KelpDAO on April 18. Then they sweet‑talked the stolen rsETH to Aave V3 as collateral and cobbled together a massive WETH loan.

“KelpDAO appears to have had $280M+ stolen an hour ago on Ethereum and Arbitrum. The attack addresses were funded via Tornado Cash,” ZachXBT tweeted on Telegram.

The Arbitrum Security Council vaulted the 30,766 ETH into an intermediary frozen wallet just before midnight Eastern on April 20, according to the team. The original address can no longer touch those coins.

Follow us on X to get the latest news as it happens

Arbitrum(@arbitrum) froze the #KelpDAO hacker’s 30,766 $ETH ($71.15M) on Arbitrum 20 minutes ago. – Lookonchain (@lookonchain) April 21, 2026

Only a governance vote can rescue the ETH from its new prison. Arbitrum said that the process will involve the relevant parties.

“After significant technical diligence and deliberation, the Security Council identified and executed a technical approach to move funds to safety without affecting any other chain state or Arbitrum users,” the team said.

The Security Council is a 12‑member body elected by the Arbitrum DAO. It handles time‑sensitive decisions and emergency measures to protect the DAO, its members, and the broader Arbitrum community. Today’s action was a notable use of those emergency powers.

The KelpDAO hack was the biggest DeFi exploit of 2026. LayerZero preliminarily linked the attack to North Korea’s Lazarus Group, likely its TraderTraitor sub‑unit.

Read More

2026-04-21 08:15