Morning Minute: Future of DeFi in Question After $292M KelpDAO Exploit

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Today’s top stories:

• Crypto majors fall and then rebound as Iran tensions escalate; BTC at $75.4k
• ETFs saw $1.4B in inflows for the week, the second biggest week of the year
• DeFi TVL falls by $ 13B as KelpDAO uses the falling power worsens; AAVE -25%
• Vercel’s CEO says that “high-level players” have used AI in the process
• Asteroid meme has a $150M market cap after Elon says “okay” on the SpaceX mascot

🔴 $292M Kelp DAO Exploit Triggers Aave Bank Run, $9B Leaves DeFi Per Day

On Saturday at 17:35 UTC, an attacker sent a single message generated by Kelp DAO’s LayerZero-powered cross-chain. bridge.

The bridge accepted it as valid and released 116,500 rETH – about $292 million and 18% of the total supply. bag which was already paid for by Tornado Cash ten hours earlier. No ETH has ever changed hands on the other side. The rsETH was successfully created from nothing. The attacker put it in Aave V3 and V4 as collateral, borrowed the ETH wrapped with it, and walked away.

Spirit they were not stolen. His contracts are good. But now it’s carrying around $196M in bad debt that it didn’t make, because rsETH was printed as collateral for ETH – a bad idea.

After that, TVL on AAVE dropped 25% from $26.4B to ~$20B in one day and continues to drop during the day. Large DeFi TVL down by $13B. The AAVE mark dropped by 30%.

ETH depositors who tried to withdraw found their money at zero, so they started borrowing stablecoins against their deposits to withdraw – bookkeeping bank. SparkLend, Fluid, Upshift, and Lido have all frozen or suspended exposure to rsETH. Holders of rsETH on 20+ chains now have uncertain support signals.

Aave’s statement that Sunday said rsETH on Ethereum mainnet is “fully supported” but remains dry “out of an abundance of caution.” But the damage is done.

DeFi users are reviewing the calculation. Is it worth risking money to get a higher yield? And now every loan policy must be reviewed for security. It will take time to rebuild from this, if possible.

There has been $600M lost from DeFi through transactions in the last three weeks. And the trend is increasing…

Important Details:

• Kelp DAO’s LayerZero Bridge was used on Saturday for 116,500 rsETH (~$292M, 18% of assets); the attacker created an immutable rsETH and used it as collateral for Aave to borrow real WETH; ~$196M in bad debt outstanding on Aave; AAVE -30%; The biggest use of DeFi for 2026
• Transmission: Aave frozen rsETH and WETH across Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, Mantle, and Linea; TVL dropped $6.2B in one day; ETH depositors borrowing stablecoins to withdraw made the bank stronger; SparkLend, Fluid, Upshift, and Lido all suspended exposure to rsETH
• Structural issue: LRT tokens such as rsETH were published as collateral next to ETH on Aave, Compound, and Euler; using this assumes that support was not always available; it was not; Every DeFi lending protocol is now required to review the risk of liquid interest

🌊 BTC Hits $78K; Then Iran Closes Hormuz Again

Friday was the most violent 24 hours in the crypto markets since the war began.

Iranian FM Araghchi wrote that the Strait of Hormuz “is open to all commercial ships.” Trump followed Truth Social by saying Iran had agreed to an “indefinite” freeze on its nuclear program and said the deal was “enough.”

Bitcoin it went from $74.5K to $78,400 – its first print above $78K since February 4. Oil fell about 10% to ~$82/barrel. The S&P 500 closed at a record high of 7,121. There was $600M+ in crypto shorts liquidations. ETFs posted ~$800M+ in inflows, the largest in months.

The vibes were great.

As of Saturday morning, the tanker owners were receiving radio calls from Iran closing the route. State media said Hormuz had returned to “regular management and control.” BTC bounced back to ~$74K to regain its recent gains, Oil rose to $90 again and commodity futures are in the red.

And a return to war seems more likely than ever…

📅 Saylor Wants to Pay STRC Dividends Twice a Month

The way wrote the first proxy On Thursday they decided to change STRC’s salary from monthly to semi-monthly.

The annual rate remains at 11.5%, and the total liability of $1.2B remains unchanged. Savers receive small checks every two weeks instead of one large check per month. If approved, the first monthly payment will be due on July 15.

So this can be seen in STRC prices in the last few months. Until the cut-off date of the 15th session, STRC trades at or above its $100 level with volume increasing to 14. Then it slows down for several weeks as traders no longer need to hold this session. On the 1st of the month, it hits $100 again and the cycle repeats.

With a monthly payment, Saylor can remove the 2-week period when STRC does small business. This could mean more money to spend on buying Bitcoin – and safer storage for STRC holders.

Assuming this goes through, expect Bitcoin to gain (and possibly even more)…

🚀 Dead Girl’s Wish Generated $175M in Meme Money

Liv Perrotto was 15 years old when she died of cancer in January. Before passing, created the famous Shiba Inu named Asteroid which flew in SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission in 2024 as a zero-gravity signal. His dying wish was simple: he wanted Elon Musk to make Asteroid the official SpaceX mascot.

Radio host Glenn Beck wrote his talk on X Thursday night. Elon replied “I’ll get back to you soon” at 11:50 PM ET. The answer alone was enough to send the ASTEROID meme to a $30M+ market.

But the traders eagerly awaited Eloni’s answer. On April 18 evening, they found it. Elon answered the girl’s questions and answered “Okay” to SpaceX’s final product, confirming Asteroid as SpaceX’s official mascot.

The token was sent to $100M+ market cap within hours, reaching $190M+ overnight. It now sells for around $155M.

Now the question becomes – will Elon go ahead and make Asteroid Shiba the mascot of SpaceX? Or did this not answer?

🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

• Crypto majors are in the red but are increasing after Sunday’s big selloff; BTC -0.1% at $75.4k; ETH -1% at $2,316; SOL flat at $85; HYPE -4% at $41.30
• SKY (+5%)CC (+4%) and M (+7%) led the top leaders
• Oil + 2% on $ 88; Gold even $4,780
• Stock futures red after breaking the green record
• Commander-in-Chief of Vercel confirmed the violation tracked down an AI tool (Context.ai), which hacked visitors to Vercel through a hacked Google Workspace account; Executive director Guillermo Rauch called the actors “very intelligent” and said they may have used AI to speed up the intervention.
• Coinbase is deploying AI assistants modeled after former managers directly to Slack and email; “Fred” comes from co-founder Fred Ehrsam and acts as a process assistant; “Balaji” was created by former CTO Balaji Srinivasan and is designed to challenge assumptions and introduce innovation.
• Sam Altman’s World launched its biggest upgrade here, bringing one’s testimonials to Zoom, Tinder, and selling concert tickets; Tinder will introduce a “verified person” badge, Zoom will get a deeper feature called Deep Face, and Concert Kit will allow artists to reserve tickets for real people to block scalper bots.

Corporate Treasuries & ETFs

Meme Coin Tracker

• Meme leaders he was green for the day and week; DOGE +1%, SHIB +31%, PEPE +1%, TRUMP +1%, PENGU +2%, SPX -1%, FARTCOIN -2%
• Asteroid (+150x), Faith (+400%), Zerebro (+ 40%), and Grifain (+ 39%) led the popular leaders

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

• Pleasures of the Creator launched this week with retail, launch, AMM and more calling itself “Solana’s iPhone Moment”; its CRX brand at $13M
• RAVE photo it fell 90% after the ZachXBT survey

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

• Directors of NFT participated in the weekend but fell at night; Punks -1% at 26.6 ETH, Pudgy -5% at 4.36 ETH, BAYC -6% at 7.85 ETH; Hypurr’s -1% at 386 HYPE
• An ordinary person (+ 20%) and Nakamigos (+ 15%) led the notable movers
• A picture of PUNK he was dropped for all the Punk fans, it’s up 200,000% to $10M in its first night of sales