On April 18, an attacker drained 116,500 rsETH from the LayerZero bridge. Then deposited the stolen collateral on Aave V3. Then borrowed against it before anyone could freeze the markets.
Bad debt landed somewhere between $124M and $230M. Aave's native insurance layer, Umbrella, had $54M sitting in its aWETH vault. That covered a fraction of the gap.
So the DAO proposed something it has never done at this scale: write a check to help close it.
The coalition
DeFi United is the vehicle. A cross-protocol recovery fund assembled in the aftermath of the Kelp DAO exploit, targeting 100,000 ETH total. As of April 24, it had raised roughly 69,534 ETH (approximately $161M). EtherFi committed 5,000. Lido put in 2,500. Stani Kulechov pledged 5,000 personally. Emilio Frangella added 500.
