Arbitrum Security Council Freezes $71.1M in ETH Tied to Kelp DAO Exploit

Arbitrum's Security Council has frozen 30,766 ETH—worth about $71.1 million—at an address linked to the weekend's Kelp DAO exploit, which resulted in an estimated $292 million loss, CoinDesk reported. In a post on X Tuesday, Postal Arbitrum said the Security Council moved the assets to an intermediate frozen wallet. The group said the step does not affect the state of other chains or Arbitrum users, and that the funds will remain frozen unless the arbitration committee authorizes further action. "The Security Council, based on information provided by law enforcement, identified the attackers and, while remaining committed to safeguarding the security and integrity of the Arbitrum community, ensured that no Arbitrum users or applications were affected," the statement said. The Block said it has contacted Arbitrum for additional details. Kelp DAO—a crosschain bridge built on LayerZero—reported on Saturday that 116,500 rsETH tokens worth roughly $292 million were stolen in the attack. Early findings from LayerZero indicate the incident may be connected to Lazarus, a North Korean hacking group. LayerZero also faulted Kelp DAO's use of a 1-to-1 decentralized verification network (DVN) configuration, arguing it creates a single point of failure by lacking independent verification to catch fraudulent crosschain messages. Kelp DAO later walked back its comment, saying the 1:1 DVN setup is LayerZero's default configuration.