How hackers stole $30M with one mistake #layerzero #exploit

Added: 2026-05-06

[00:00:00]A hacker used crash 13.5 billion in D5 value in two days and here's the scary part. The protocol that got exploded wasn't even the one that collapsed. Kelp DAO runs a liquidity re-staking protocol. Now, you deposit Ethereum and you get RS ETH back and they use a layer zero bridge to move that RS ETH between 20 different networks and that bridge held all the reserves. And last Friday, an attacker sent a fake on-chain message and this resulted in the bridge releasing 116,500 RS ETH to the hacker. That's 18% of supply gone in one transaction. The attacker compromised two RPC nodes and D dosed the clean ones. The system then fell back to the hack nodes and confirmed a fake transaction. Kelp ran a single verifier with no backup and layer zero told them to use multiple verifiers and they choose not to, which resulted in 292 million disappearing. The attacker deposited the stolen RS ETH into Aave as collateral and borrowed 106,000 ETH and he walked away with 243.8 million dollars. And the total value of D5 dropped from 99.5 billion to 86 billion in two days and no one knows which protocol gets hit next.