Avalanche Foundation joins DeFi United in support of Aave after rsETH exploit

The Avalanche Foundation (@AvalancheFDN) on April 25 said it is aligning with DeFi United, a coordinated effort supporting Aave following the April 18 exploit of ethereum:0xa1290d69c65a6fe4df752f95823fae25cb99e5a7. The foundation described the episode as DeFi's first transparent stress test of TradFi-scale flows. DeFi United has raised more than $160M as of April 25, with over 100,360 ETH committed across the coalition. Mantle pledged up to 30,000 ETH via a three-year credit facility. The Aave DAO is voting on deploying 25,000 ETH from the treasury, and Aave founder Stani Kulechov added 5,000 ETH from personal funds. The exploit targeted KelpDAO's LayerZero V2 Unichain-to-Ethereum bridge, configured as a 1-of-1 DVN. A forged inbound packet minted 116,500 unbacked rsETH. The attacker deposited about 89,567 rsETH into Aave V3 across Ethereum and Arbitrum, then borrowed roughly 82,650 WETH, creating up to $230.1M in bad debt. Aave said its smart contracts were not compromised. Recovery efforts have been partial. Arbitrum's Security Council froze 30,765 ethereum:native tied to the exploit, while the remainder was bridged into bitcoin:native via Thorchain. In the immediate aftermath, Aave's TVL fell by an estimated $6B to $9B.