LayerZero is an omnichain interoperability protocol designed to enable developers to seamlessly issue, connect, and expand assets or applications across multiple blockchains. The protocol provides permissionless infrastructure through a decentralized architecture, with core functions including fully composable liquidity transport and support for cross-chain messaging and the Omnichain Fungible Token (OFT) standard. By decoupling underlying communication logic from the application layer, LayerZero allows smart contracts on different networks to interact directly, eliminating the complexity of cross-chain bridging while enhancing capital efficiency and development velocity.
blockchain trading platform Ekiden has announced the completion of a $2 million seed funding round, led by Unicorn Factory Ventures and P2 Ventures. The round also attracted participation from angel investors who have previously invested in projects such as GSR, Pyth, Aptos, LayerZero, and Cube Exchange. It is reported that Ekiden is valued at $20 million. The company is dedicated to bringing institutional-grade trading on-chain, providing efficient and secure trading solutions through blockchain technology. (TechFundingNews)
Blockworks has announced the completion of a Series A extension funding round, achieving a post-money valuation of $192 million. The round was co-led by ParaFi Capital and Reciprocal Ventures, with support from Coinbase Ventures, MoonPay Ventures, and several other institutions and industry participants. The funding also attracted investments from over 20 founders and operators of ecosystem projects including Solana, LayerZero, Arbitrum, and Kraken, though the specific amount raised has not been disclosed.The company stated that while the crypto market has grown to a trillion-dollar scale lacking traditional capital market infrastructure, it still faces issues such as fragmented data, inconsistent disclosure standards, and a lack of investor communication mechanisms. Blockworks aims to fill this gap through a "data + disclosure + investor relations" tripartite architecture. (CNBC)
Aave has published a post-mortem of the April 18 rsETH incident, stating that the rsETH LayerZero V2 cross-chain bridge of liquid staking protocol Kelp accepted a forged message during a cross-chain transfer from Unichain to Ethereum. This caused the adapter on the Ethereum side to release 116,500 rsETH without a corresponding burn on the Unichain side. Aave stated that the attack occurred on a third-party cross-chain bridge infrastructure. However, the attacker deposited the stolen rsETH into 8 Aave V3 positions, borrowing 82,650 WETH and 821 wstETH, which impacted the Aave market.Aave stated that the attacker's rsETH on Arbitrum has now been burned. The LayerZero OFT adapter has replenished 116,131.72 rsETH in 5 batches, and the asset backing for rsETH has been fully restored. The affected WETH and rsETH markets have returned to normal.
LayerZero Labs has released a recent incident report stating that on April 18, 2026, the KelpDAO rsETH cross-chain bridge, built on its cross-chain communication protocol, suffered an attack resulting in the theft of approximately 116,500 rsETH (around $292 million). Multiple security organizations, including Mandiant, CrowdStrike, and independent researchers, have attributed this attack to the North Korea-linked hacker group TraderTraitor (UNC4899).According to the report, the attack began on March 6, 2026. The attackers compromised a LayerZero developer account through social engineering, obtained session keys, and penetrated the RPC cloud environment. They further contaminated internal RPC node data and manipulated the returned results to deceive monitoring systems and the Decentralized Verification Network (DVN). Subsequently, the attackers launched a denial-of-service attack against external RPC providers, forcing the verification system to rely on the compromised nodes to generate forged cross-chain proofs, thereby successfully extracting the funds.LayerZero pointed out that the core vulnerability of this incident lay in the affected application adopting a "single-verifier" configuration. This allowed the target contract to execute asset releases upon receiving only a single valid signature, leading to the theft of rsETH.Following the incident, LayerZero Labs announced an adjustment to security policies. This includes no longer allowing its own DVN to act as the sole signer in a single-verifier configuration, rebuilding the affected cloud infrastructure, and introducing short-term credentials, instant permission upgrades, and multi-party approval mechanisms to enhance security. Additionally, zeroShadow and law enforcement agencies have initiated investigations and asset tracing. LayerZero stated it will continue to collaborate with ecosystem partners to strengthen the cross-chain security framework to address increasingly sophisticated nation-state attack threats.
Solv Protocol has announced the migration of over $700 million in tokenized Bitcoin assets to Chainlink's cross-chain protocol CCIP, and will gradually phase out LayerZero's bridging support across multiple chains. The migration involves core assets such as SolvBTC and xSolvBTC. Solv stated that the decision is based on the latest security reviews and recent cross-chain security incidents, and CCIP will become its standard cross-chain infrastructure. This move follows Kelp DAO's migration of approximately $290 million in assets to Chainlink, further strengthening the trend of "cross-chain infrastructure shifting toward security-first migration." (CoinDesk)
According to an official announcement from Curve Finance, due to a hacker attack on the rsETH LayerZero infrastructure, Curve Finance has suspended its LayerZero infrastructure for security reasons, pending further investigation into the root cause before resuming operations. This suspension affects the following: cross-chain bridging of CRV tokens from BNB Chain, Sonic, Avalanche, Fantom, Etherlink, and Kava (chains using native bridges remain unaffected), as well as the crvUSD fast bridge functionality (the L2 slow bridge remains fully operational). Meanwhile, KelpDAO is also reported to have suffered a vulnerability exploit involving approximately $291 million; the exact extent of losses is still under investigation.
Odaily News The Ethereum restaking protocol Kelp has officially confirmed suspicious cross-chain activity involving rsETH. It has currently paused the rsETH contracts on the mainnet and multiple L2s and launched an investigation into the attack. It is also collaborating with LayerZero, Unichain, as well as audit firms and security experts to conduct a root cause analysis (RCA). A post-mortem report will be released subsequently.
According to CoinDesk, Kelp DAO’s LayerZero-based cross-chain bridge was attacked, with the attacker withdrawing 116,500 rsETH—worth approximately $292 million at current prices, or roughly 18% of its circulating supply. This incident has become the largest DeFi attack of 2026 to date. In response, Aave, SparkLend, and Fluid have frozen rsETH-related markets, and Lido Finance has suspended new deposits into its earnETH product. Kelp DAO stated it is jointly investigating the incident with LayerZero, auditing firms, and external security experts.
Odaily, Mitchell Amador, CEO of bug bounty platform Immunefi, stated at the WAIB Summit that new AI models such as Claude Opus 4.8 and ChatGPT 5.5 are shifting the balance of cybersecurity offense and defense in favor of attackers, leading to a resurgence in crypto hacks in 2026. Data from DefiLlama shows that in April 2026, illicit actors stole over $634 million from crypto platforms, the highest monthly total since the Bybit hack in February 2025 drove losses of approximately $1.4 billion.Amador stated that the crypto industry is in a critical survival period for the next three to four years until security teams leverage similar AI models to build codebases that attackers cannot breach; if the industry adopts more crowd-sourced security solutions, this timeline could be shortened to within two years. The latest Claude Mythos model, Fable 5, from AI company Anthropic, previously raised concerns about accelerating the ability to exploit crypto vulnerabilities.Anthropic stated that Fable 5 has safeguards in place that will redirect topics related to cybersecurity and similar fields to Claude Opus 4.8. On April 19, an attacker transferred approximately 116,500 restaked Ethereum (rsETH) from Kelp DAO's LayerZero-based rsETH bridge, valued at around $290 million to $293 million at the time. Cross-chain protocol LayerZero stated that the 1/1 decentralized verification network configuration of Kelp DAO relied on a single verification path for processing cross-chain messages, creating a single point of failure. (Cointelegraph)
according to on-chain analyst Yujin's monitoring, STG surged over 40% after an address withdrew 8 million STG, worth $2.2 million, from Gate. Following STG's acquisition by ZRO, it can only be unidirectionally exchanged for ZRO at a fixed rate of 1 STG to 0.08634 ZRO. The price of ZRO is $0.84, which, according to the exchange rate, corresponds to a STG price of approximately $0.07. The current STG price is $0.36.
in April this year, KelpDAO's LayerZero bridge was exploited in a $292 million vulnerability attack, triggering an $8.45 billion deposit run on Aave within 48 hours, marking the largest capital outflow event in decentralized finance (DeFi) history. Aave founder Stani Kulechov stated that the design of Aave V3 withstood the market test, demonstrating the network's "resilience." However, independent data indicates that Aave's survival primarily relied on $300 million in emergency rescue, including a 25,000 ETH guarantee from the Aave DAO and a personal injection of 5,000 ETH (approximately $8.4 million) by Kulechov.Kulechov attributed the vulnerability to third-party infrastructure rather than core smart contracts. However, analysts pointed out that this incident exposed deficiencies in Aave's risk architecture and insurance mechanisms, leading the platform to incur significant bad debt (approximately $123.7 million in wETH). To prevent future bridge failures from triggering systemic bank runs, Aave V4 will adopt a modular "hub-and-spoke" architecture, enabling local risk auto-adjustment and collateral freezing. (CoinDesk)
Aave posted on X, stating that according to the recovery plan, the final batch of rsETH has been sent to the LayerZero lockbox.Aave also noted that rsETH and all Aave markets are currently operating normally.
: On-chain analyst Tom Wan stated on platform X that the current ETH utilization rate has dropped below 90%, and the lending APY has fallen to 1.9%. Since the rsETH LayerZero cross-chain bridge was attacked, the deposits of wstETH and weETH have decreased by approximately $1.2 billion and $1.76 billion, respectively. As the strategy of leveraged looping wstETH/weETH against ETH becomes profitable again, market attention is turning to whether demand for ETH leveraged loops will return, or if capital will continue to wait on the sidelines or flow into protocols like Spark and Morpho.
Aave announced that the first batch of rsETH has been transferred to LayerZero’s OFT adapter, and cross-chain transfers of rsETH between the Ethereum mainnet and various L2 networks have now resumed. This development means that the rsETH cross-chain channels previously affected have been restored, covering operations across the Ethereum mainnet and L2 networks.
Odaily, Mitchell Amador, CEO of bug bounty platform Immunefi, stated at the WAIB Summit that new AI models such as Claude Opus 4.8 and ChatGPT 5.5 are shifting the balance of cybersecurity offense and defense in favor of attackers, leading to a resurgence in crypto hacks in 2026. Data from DefiLlama shows that in April 2026, illicit actors stole over $634 million from crypto platforms, the highest monthly total since the Bybit hack in February 2025 drove losses of approximately $1.4 billion.Amador stated that the crypto industry is in a critical survival period for the next three to four years until security teams leverage similar AI models to build codebases that attackers cannot breach; if the industry adopts more crowd-sourced security solutions, this timeline could be shortened to within two years. The latest Claude Mythos model, Fable 5, from AI company Anthropic, previously raised concerns about accelerating the ability to exploit crypto vulnerabilities.Anthropic stated that Fable 5 has safeguards in place that will redirect topics related to cybersecurity and similar fields to Claude Opus 4.8. On April 19, an attacker transferred approximately 116,500 restaked Ethereum (rsETH) from Kelp DAO's LayerZero-based rsETH bridge, valued at around $290 million to $293 million at the time. Cross-chain protocol LayerZero stated that the 1/1 decentralized verification network configuration of Kelp DAO relied on a single verification path for processing cross-chain messages, creating a single point of failure. (Cointelegraph)
in April this year, KelpDAO's LayerZero bridge was exploited in a $292 million vulnerability attack, triggering an $8.45 billion deposit run on Aave within 48 hours, marking the largest capital outflow event in decentralized finance (DeFi) history. Aave founder Stani Kulechov stated that the design of Aave V3 withstood the market test, demonstrating the network's "resilience." However, independent data indicates that Aave's survival primarily relied on $300 million in emergency rescue, including a 25,000 ETH guarantee from the Aave DAO and a personal injection of 5,000 ETH (approximately $8.4 million) by Kulechov.Kulechov attributed the vulnerability to third-party infrastructure rather than core smart contracts. However, analysts pointed out that this incident exposed deficiencies in Aave's risk architecture and insurance mechanisms, leading the platform to incur significant bad debt (approximately $123.7 million in wETH). To prevent future bridge failures from triggering systemic bank runs, Aave V4 will adopt a modular "hub-and-spoke" architecture, enabling local risk auto-adjustment and collateral freezing. (CoinDesk)
Aave has published a post-mortem of the April 18 rsETH incident, stating that the rsETH LayerZero V2 cross-chain bridge of liquid staking protocol Kelp accepted a forged message during a cross-chain transfer from Unichain to Ethereum. This caused the adapter on the Ethereum side to release 116,500 rsETH without a corresponding burn on the Unichain side. Aave stated that the attack occurred on a third-party cross-chain bridge infrastructure. However, the attacker deposited the stolen rsETH into 8 Aave V3 positions, borrowing 82,650 WETH and 821 wstETH, which impacted the Aave market.Aave stated that the attacker's rsETH on Arbitrum has now been burned. The LayerZero OFT adapter has replenished 116,131.72 rsETH in 5 batches, and the asset backing for rsETH has been fully restored. The affected WETH and rsETH markets have returned to normal.
LayerZero Labs has released a recent incident report stating that on April 18, 2026, the KelpDAO rsETH cross-chain bridge, built on its cross-chain communication protocol, suffered an attack resulting in the theft of approximately 116,500 rsETH (around $292 million). Multiple security organizations, including Mandiant, CrowdStrike, and independent researchers, have attributed this attack to the North Korea-linked hacker group TraderTraitor (UNC4899).According to the report, the attack began on March 6, 2026. The attackers compromised a LayerZero developer account through social engineering, obtained session keys, and penetrated the RPC cloud environment. They further contaminated internal RPC node data and manipulated the returned results to deceive monitoring systems and the Decentralized Verification Network (DVN). Subsequently, the attackers launched a denial-of-service attack against external RPC providers, forcing the verification system to rely on the compromised nodes to generate forged cross-chain proofs, thereby successfully extracting the funds.LayerZero pointed out that the core vulnerability of this incident lay in the affected application adopting a "single-verifier" configuration. This allowed the target contract to execute asset releases upon receiving only a single valid signature, leading to the theft of rsETH.Following the incident, LayerZero Labs announced an adjustment to security policies. This includes no longer allowing its own DVN to act as the sole signer in a single-verifier configuration, rebuilding the affected cloud infrastructure, and introducing short-term credentials, instant permission upgrades, and multi-party approval mechanisms to enhance security. Additionally, zeroShadow and law enforcement agencies have initiated investigations and asset tracing. LayerZero stated it will continue to collaborate with ecosystem partners to strengthen the cross-chain security framework to address increasingly sophisticated nation-state attack threats.
: On-chain analyst Tom Wan stated on platform X that the current ETH utilization rate has dropped below 90%, and the lending APY has fallen to 1.9%. Since the rsETH LayerZero cross-chain bridge was attacked, the deposits of wstETH and weETH have decreased by approximately $1.2 billion and $1.76 billion, respectively. As the strategy of leveraged looping wstETH/weETH against ETH becomes profitable again, market attention is turning to whether demand for ETH leveraged loops will return, or if capital will continue to wait on the sidelines or flow into protocols like Spark and Morpho.
following the $292 million exploit of Kelp DAO's LayerZero bridge, the security of cross-chain infrastructure has once again come under scrutiny. DeFi protocols Kelp DAO, Solv Protocol, Re, and crypto exchange Kraken have all taken similar migration measures, with the total value of this outflow reaching approximately $4 billion.Decentralized finance protocol Lombard has become the latest project to join the migration wave, announcing a gradual phase-out of LayerZero and the migration of over $1 billion in Bitcoin collateral assets to Chainlink's Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP). Bitcoin-related tokens issued by Lombard include LBTC and BTC.b. It is reported that Lombard's initial migration assets cover the Solana, Etherlink, Berachain, Corn, and TAC chains, while the use of LayerZero on Morph and Swell will also be terminated. As of now, LayerZero has not responded to requests for comment. (CoinDesk)
Aave has published a post-mortem of the April 18 rsETH incident, stating that the rsETH LayerZero V2 cross-chain bridge of liquid staking protocol Kelp accepted a forged message during a cross-chain transfer from Unichain to Ethereum. This caused the adapter on the Ethereum side to release 116,500 rsETH without a corresponding burn on the Unichain side. Aave stated that the attack occurred on a third-party cross-chain bridge infrastructure. However, the attacker deposited the stolen rsETH into 8 Aave V3 positions, borrowing 82,650 WETH and 821 wstETH, which impacted the Aave market.Aave stated that the attacker's rsETH on Arbitrum has now been burned. The LayerZero OFT adapter has replenished 116,131.72 rsETH in 5 batches, and the asset backing for rsETH has been fully restored. The affected WETH and rsETH markets have returned to normal.
Robinhood has listed AERO, QNT, and ZRO.
LayerZero Labs has released a recent incident report stating that on April 18, 2026, the KelpDAO rsETH cross-chain bridge, built on its cross-chain communication protocol, suffered an attack resulting in the theft of approximately 116,500 rsETH (around $292 million). Multiple security organizations, including Mandiant, CrowdStrike, and independent researchers, have attributed this attack to the North Korea-linked hacker group TraderTraitor (UNC4899).According to the report, the attack began on March 6, 2026. The attackers compromised a LayerZero developer account through social engineering, obtained session keys, and penetrated the RPC cloud environment. They further contaminated internal RPC node data and manipulated the returned results to deceive monitoring systems and the Decentralized Verification Network (DVN). Subsequently, the attackers launched a denial-of-service attack against external RPC providers, forcing the verification system to rely on the compromised nodes to generate forged cross-chain proofs, thereby successfully extracting the funds.LayerZero pointed out that the core vulnerability of this incident lay in the affected application adopting a "single-verifier" configuration. This allowed the target contract to execute asset releases upon receiving only a single valid signature, leading to the theft of rsETH.Following the incident, LayerZero Labs announced an adjustment to security policies. This includes no longer allowing its own DVN to act as the sole signer in a single-verifier configuration, rebuilding the affected cloud infrastructure, and introducing short-term credentials, instant permission upgrades, and multi-party approval mechanisms to enhance security. Additionally, zeroShadow and law enforcement agencies have initiated investigations and asset tracing. LayerZero stated it will continue to collaborate with ecosystem partners to strengthen the cross-chain security framework to address increasingly sophisticated nation-state attack threats.
Aave announced that the first batch of rsETH has been transferred to LayerZero’s OFT adapter, and cross-chain transfers of rsETH between the Ethereum mainnet and various L2 networks have now resumed. This development means that the rsETH cross-chain channels previously affected have been restored, covering operations across the Ethereum mainnet and L2 networks.
following the Kelp security incident, Tether's asset interoperability protocol USDT0 has disclosed details of its protocol security architecture. It stated that the system currently utilizes a proprietary DVN (Decentralized Verification Network) with message veto authority, and requires 3 independent validators, operating on different codebases, to reach a 3/3 consensus before cross-chain messages can be settled. The current verification nodes include the USDT0 proprietary DVN, LayerZero, and Canary, with future plans to expand to 4/4 and 5/5 verification mechanisms.USDT0 also stated that all multi-signature transactions must undergo multiple reviews by internal teams, external security teams, and auditing firms before signatures are submitted. The relevant contracts have been audited by firms such as Guardian and OpenZeppelin, and a $6 million bug bounty program has been launched on Immunefi.
LayerZero Labs posted on platform X, stating that the internal RPC used by LayerZero Labs had been attacked by the Lazarus Group over the past three weeks, compromising the true source of its DVN (Decentralized Verifier Network). Meanwhile, external RPC providers experienced DDoS attacks. The incident affected 0.14% of applications and approximately 0.36% of asset value. LayerZero Labs stated that assets are currently secure, and over $9 billion in funds have been bridged through the protocol since April 19.In response to the security risk, LayerZero Labs has ceased providing services for its DVN in a 1/1 configuration. Default configurations for all pathways will migrate to a multi-DVN model of at least 3/3 or 5/5 signatures. Additionally, regarding an incident from three years ago where a multi-sig holder mistakenly used a hardware wallet for personal transactions, LayerZero Labs has removed that signer and replaced the wallet, while developing a custom OneSig multi-sig system. LayerZero Labs advises developers to lock configurations to avoid reliance on default settings and plans to launch an asset management platform, Console, to enhance security monitoring.
Odaily, Mitchell Amador, CEO of bug bounty platform Immunefi, stated at the WAIB Summit that new AI models such as Claude Opus 4.8 and ChatGPT 5.5 are shifting the balance of cybersecurity offense and defense in favor of attackers, leading to a resurgence in crypto hacks in 2026. Data from DefiLlama shows that in April 2026, illicit actors stole over $634 million from crypto platforms, the highest monthly total since the Bybit hack in February 2025 drove losses of approximately $1.4 billion.Amador stated that the crypto industry is in a critical survival period for the next three to four years until security teams leverage similar AI models to build codebases that attackers cannot breach; if the industry adopts more crowd-sourced security solutions, this timeline could be shortened to within two years. The latest Claude Mythos model, Fable 5, from AI company Anthropic, previously raised concerns about accelerating the ability to exploit crypto vulnerabilities.Anthropic stated that Fable 5 has safeguards in place that will redirect topics related to cybersecurity and similar fields to Claude Opus 4.8. On April 19, an attacker transferred approximately 116,500 restaked Ethereum (rsETH) from Kelp DAO's LayerZero-based rsETH bridge, valued at around $290 million to $293 million at the time. Cross-chain protocol LayerZero stated that the 1/1 decentralized verification network configuration of Kelp DAO relied on a single verification path for processing cross-chain messages, creating a single point of failure. (Cointelegraph)
according to on-chain analyst Yujin's monitoring, STG surged over 40% after an address withdrew 8 million STG, worth $2.2 million, from Gate. Following STG's acquisition by ZRO, it can only be unidirectionally exchanged for ZRO at a fixed rate of 1 STG to 0.08634 ZRO. The price of ZRO is $0.84, which, according to the exchange rate, corresponds to a STG price of approximately $0.07. The current STG price is $0.36.
in April this year, KelpDAO's LayerZero bridge was exploited in a $292 million vulnerability attack, triggering an $8.45 billion deposit run on Aave within 48 hours, marking the largest capital outflow event in decentralized finance (DeFi) history. Aave founder Stani Kulechov stated that the design of Aave V3 withstood the market test, demonstrating the network's "resilience." However, independent data indicates that Aave's survival primarily relied on $300 million in emergency rescue, including a 25,000 ETH guarantee from the Aave DAO and a personal injection of 5,000 ETH (approximately $8.4 million) by Kulechov.Kulechov attributed the vulnerability to third-party infrastructure rather than core smart contracts. However, analysts pointed out that this incident exposed deficiencies in Aave's risk architecture and insurance mechanisms, leading the platform to incur significant bad debt (approximately $123.7 million in wETH). To prevent future bridge failures from triggering systemic bank runs, Aave V4 will adopt a modular "hub-and-spoke" architecture, enabling local risk auto-adjustment and collateral freezing. (CoinDesk)
Aave has published a post-mortem of the April 18 rsETH incident, stating that the rsETH LayerZero V2 cross-chain bridge of liquid staking protocol Kelp accepted a forged message during a cross-chain transfer from Unichain to Ethereum. This caused the adapter on the Ethereum side to release 116,500 rsETH without a corresponding burn on the Unichain side. Aave stated that the attack occurred on a third-party cross-chain bridge infrastructure. However, the attacker deposited the stolen rsETH into 8 Aave V3 positions, borrowing 82,650 WETH and 821 wstETH, which impacted the Aave market.Aave stated that the attacker's rsETH on Arbitrum has now been burned. The LayerZero OFT adapter has replenished 116,131.72 rsETH in 5 batches, and the asset backing for rsETH has been fully restored. The affected WETH and rsETH markets have returned to normal.
Aave posted on X, stating that according to the recovery plan, the final batch of rsETH has been sent to the LayerZero lockbox.Aave also noted that rsETH and all Aave markets are currently operating normally.
Robinhood has listed AERO, QNT, and ZRO.