LayerZero has attributed a roughly $290-292 million exploit involving KelpDAO to North Korea's Lazarus Group, the state-sponsored hacking collective responsible for billions in crypto theft. LayerZero is pointing to Kelp's own bridge configuration as the root vulnerability, distancing itself from direct protocol fault. The exact loss figure varies slightly by source — CoinDesk reports $290M, Decrypt reports $292M — but the scale is not in dispute.
A nine-figure bridge hack tied to a nation-state actor is a direct hit to confidence in cross-chain infrastructure, which underpins much of DeFi's growth thesis. LayerZero is one of the most widely integrated messaging protocols in crypto — any perception that its ecosystem is unsafe puts pressure on tokens and protocols built on top of it. Investors holding liquid staking or restaking assets routed through third-party bridges face the starkest immediate risk.
Ongoing: LayerZero and KelpDAO post-mortems and any official on-chain recovery attempts. Watch for U.S. Treasury OFAC updates linking new wallet addresses to Lazarus. Monitor KelpDAO's native token (KELP) and LayerZero's ZRO token for sustained sell pressure in the 48-72 hours following the announcement.
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