- TRON founder Justin Sun offered to broker a deal between Kelp and the hacker who stole $294 million from the protocol.
- Kelp’s TVL crashed from $1.8 billion to $1.4 billion, while Aave dropped from $26 billion to $19 billion over the weekend.
Another high-profile heist hit the crypto community. On Saturday, a $294 million loss from an exploit rocked Kelp, a liquid staking protocol.
In light of the unfortunate event, Justin Sun, founder of TRON (TRX), announced on his social media platform that he is willing to negotiate with the person or group behind the Kelp attack.
TRON Founder Justin Sun’s Offer on Kelp Hacker
In a post on Sunday, Sun asked how much the hacker was willing to settle for. He invited the culprit to talk with him and KelpDAO.
The TRON founder told the perpetrator that it’s not worth dragging both Kelp and Aave (AAVE) down. Additionally, he reminded the hacker that it’s hard to spend the nearly $300 million in stolen funds anyway.
Several key personalities in the crypto space agreed with Sun, telling the culprit to cooperate with the settlement process. After all, they pointed out that it would be hard to launder the stolen assets because of their on-chain trail.
What Happened to Kelp During the Weekend
Kelp currently has a total value locked (TVL) of $1.57 billion. In just a few minutes over the weekend, an attacker minted 116,500 Restaked ETH (RSETH) on the platform worth $294 million.
The perpetrator then deposited the stolen RSETH into Aave and used it as collateral to borrow 106,497 Ethereum (ETH). Despite AAVE’s chain itself not being compromised, the bad debt in its system caused its market cap to crash by more than 22% from over $1.8 billion on Saturday to around $1.4 billion as of writing on Sunday. The network’s TVL also fell by approximately 27%, from roughly $26 billion to $19 billion, across the same period.
Sun’s Interests in Kelp and Aave
Sun is notably attempting to broker a deal between the parties because of his significant involvement in Kelp. In 2024, he deposited $800 million in Ether with Lido and Kelp. His allocation on Kelp is around 30,000 ETH during that time.
There are no explicit details about Sun’s assets on the platform at this point. However, KuCoin reported that the crypto billionaire redeemed 53,665 ETH from Aave worth $126 million following the attack.
