Crypto Billionaire Proposes Straight Talks With Suspected North Korea-Linked Hacker Behind $290 Million DeFi Exploit: 'How Much You Want'
Aniket Verma 6 months ago
CryptocurrencyNewsMarkets
Tron (CRYPTO: TRX) founder Justin Sun proposed on Sunday a negotiation with the hacker behind the $290 million exploit of KelpDAO’s
Tron (CRYPTO: TRX) founder Justin Sun proposed on Sunday a negotiation with the hacker behind the $290 million exploit of KelpDAO’s liquid restaking protocol.
Sun Attempts Direct Communication With Hacker
Sun addressed the KelpDAO hacker directly on X, asking, “How much you want? Let's just talk.”
The cryptocurrency billionaire contended that it’s unwise to let KelpDAO and other decentralized finance platforms, such as Aave (CRYPTO: AAVE), collapse from the hack. They also told the attacker it is not easy to spend or move loot on that kind of scale.
OK — Kelpdao hacker, how much you want? Let's just talk. With KelpDAO's help, of course. It's simply not worth it to sacrifice both Aave and KelpDAO and let them go down over this hack. You can't spend $300 million anyway.
— H.E. Justin Sun 👨🚀 🌞 (@justinsuntron) April 19, 2026
What Really Happened?
The hacker targeted a cross-chain bridge, powered by interoperability protocol LayerZero, and stole roughly $290 million in restaked Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH).
LayerZero blamed the theft on a “highly sophisticated state actor,” believed to be North Korea’s Lazarus Group.
— LayerZero (@LayerZero_Core) April 20, 2026
Ripples Through Broader DeFi
KelpDAO said it had paused rsETH contracts across the mainnet and several Layer-2 blockchains while investigating alongside its auditors and security experts.
Earlier today we identified suspicious cross-chain activity involving rsETH. We have paused rsETH contracts across mainnet and several L2s while we investigate.
— Kelp (@KelpDAO) April 18, 2026
We are working with @LayerZero_Core, @unichain, our auditors and top security experts on RCA.
We will keep you…
However, the contagion began to spread to the broader decentralized finance.
According to Lookonchain, the exploiter borrowed roughly $195 million in ETH on Aave using the stolen rsETH collateral, creating “bad debt” on the lending protocol.
As a result, major whales have begun withdrawing funds from the platform, slashing its total value locked from $26.39 billion to $17.94 billion in just two days, according to DeFiLlama.
Due to the KelpDAO exploiter borrowing over 82,600 $ETH ($195M) from #Aave using $RSETH as collateral, bad debt has appeared on #Aave.
— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) April 19, 2026
Many whales have withdrawn funds from #Aave, causing its TVL to drop from $26.396B to $20.114B — a decline of $6.28B.
Major withdrawals… pic.twitter.com/rhN28AMul9
Photo Courtesy: ozrimoz on Shutterstock.com