KelpDAO Hack Delays DeFi Underwriting, Morpho CEO Says
The $293M KelpDAO exploit has delayed but not derailed traditional finance (TradFi) institutions’ onchain plans, Morpho CEO Paul Frambot said. He added that most players may face a 3–6 month setback, while more conservative institutions could be delayed by years.
Frambot argued the move is prompting institutions and fintechs to tighten risk controls rather than exit DeFi. Some are expected to focus on smaller, isolated Bitcoin-backed lending markets instead of broader, complex deployments. He also cited “weak underwriting” by existing DeFi protocols and said the incident may open a market for institutions to become their own on-chain asset managers.
The April 18 hack, suspected to be Lazarus Group, targeted KelpDAO’s cross-chain bridge via a spoofed message. Attackers released 116,500 rsETH tokens with no underlying backing, deposited the unbacked rsETH into Aave, and used it to borrow real assets. This drove about $200M in bad debt on Aave and triggered emergency freezes across multiple Ethereum lending platforms.
Market impact measures show contagion risk: DeFi TVL fell by over $16B to $83B after the exploit (DefiLlama). Aave alone saw more than $6B outflow and TVL dropped 46% to $14B.
A related research director at the Schwab Center for Financial Research said the core vulnerability is DeFi rehypothecation of the same collateral—unbacked rsETH was rehypothecated into Aave, leaving it exposed and forcing freezes to contain spread.
Bearish
该新闻对市场的直接信号偏利空：KelpDAO事件不仅造成Aave约2000万美元级别的坏账并触发多家以太坊借贷平台紧急冻结，还导致DeFi TVL短期显著下跌（-160亿美元以上），反映出DeFi“抵押再利用/再抵押”链路存在系统性脆弱点。对交易者而言，这通常意味着：短期内市场会重新定价借贷与抵押资产的风险溢价，资金可能继续从高杠杆、依赖复杂抵押流转的协议撤离，波动率也可能上升。
从历史上看，重大协议黑客后的监管与风控收紧往往带来“先避险、后修复”的走势：早期因冻结与坏账担忧，相关代币和TVL往往承压；但中期若协议完成审计、提高抵押透明度并限制rehypothecation链条，市场再逐步恢复风险偏好。
不过，文章也提到TradFi并未撤出上链，而是把部署时间表拉长，并更倾向选择“隔离市场、单点策略、减少复杂增长与restaking”。这会在长期形成结构性利好（促使更稳健的产品形态），但在短期仍不足以抵消“风险暴露被重新审视”的下行影响，因此整体偏bearish。