DeFi United’s crowdfunding campaign raises 102,000+ ETH, with AAVE rebounding to $100

According to the official DeFi United page, the multi-protocol relief fund DeFi United, initiated and led by Aave as a service provider, has raised more than 102k ETH as of April 27. The initiative aims to cover the shortfall in bad debt created in the Aave V3 market following the April 18 cross-chain bridge attack incident involving Kelp DAO. After briefly breaking above $100, AAVE pulled back.

Latest fundraising update for DeFi United as of April 27

According to the official DeFi United page, the confirmed major contributors and amounts as of April 27 are as follows:

Arbitrum DAO: Will release 30,765 ETH that was frozen after the April 18 rsETH incident

Mantle: Plans to contribute 30,000 ETH (three-year credit; the yield rate is Lido staked rewards plus 1%)

Aave DAO: Plans to contribute 25,000 ETH (the related governance vote is still ongoing)

Stani Kulechov (Aave founder): Donates 5,000 ETH from personal funds

Ether.fi: Promises to donate 5,000 ETH

Lido DAO: Provides up to 2,500 stETH

Golem Foundation and related projects: Total of 1,000 ETH

Aave Vice President Emilio Frangella: 500 ETH

On-chain community donations: Over 272 ETH

LayerZero, Ethena, Frax Finance, Ink Foundation: Confirmed participation; specific amounts have not yet been disclosed

Based on data from Arkham Intelligence, as of April 26 (Saturday), DeFi United had raised $160 million, of which Mantle and Aave DAO together contributed 55,000 ETH (about $127 million). DeFi United’s donation address is defiunited.eth (Ethereum address: 0x0fCa5194baA59a362a835031d9C4A25970effE68). The fund continues to accept donations, and related governance votes are still ongoing.

April 18 attack technical details and bad-debt assessment

According to an official incident report published on April 20, 2026 by Aave Labs and the risk management organization Llamarisk, the attack occurred at 17:35 UTC on April 18, at Ethereum block height 24,908,285. The attacker targeted the LayerZero V2 bridge adapter on the Kelp DAO route from Unichain to Ethereum rsETH, and used its single DVN (decentralized validation network) configuration to submit forged inbound data packets, minting 116,500 units of unsecured rsETH (at the time valued at about $292 million). Of this, about 89,567 rsETH (about $221 million) was deposited into the Aave V3 market as collateral, and then about 82,650 WETH (about $191 million) was borrowed. The report clearly states that Aave’s smart contracts themselves were not exploited; the bad debt entirely came from unsecured external collateral.

According to the same report, there are two scenarios for the size of the bad debt: if a uniform write-down is applied to all rsETH holders, Aave’s bad debt is about $123.7 million; if the loss is borne only by L2 rsETH holders, bad debt is about $230.1 million, with Mantle and Arbitrum having the largest risk exposure. On April 18 at 19:00 UTC, the Aave protocol guardian froze all rsETH and wrsETH reserves for all V3 deployments, and set the loan-to-value ratio to zero. The Arbitrum security committee froze part of the attacker’s funds, and Kelp also rolled back and canceled the subsequent malicious data packets (target amount: 40,000 rsETH).

Frequently Asked Questions

What is DeFi United’s fundraising goal, and what does the progress look like as of April 27?

According to the official DeFi United page, the purpose of this relief fund is to cover an estimated rsETH bad-debt shortfall of between 68,900 and 100,000 ETH+, and as of April 27, 2026, it has raised more than 102k ETH. According to Arkham Intelligence, it has raised $160 million as of April 26, and the governance vote is still ongoing.

What is the core technical vulnerability behind the April 18 Kelp DAO bridge attack?

According to an official incident report published on April 20 by Aave Labs and Llamarisk, the attacker exploited the single DVN configuration on Kelp DAO’s LayerZero V2 bridge adapter to submit forged inbound data packets, minting 116,500 units of unsecured rsETH. Aave’s smart contracts themselves were not exploited.

What are the latest price and price increase for the AAVE token on April 27?

According to HTX market data, as of the time of publication on April 27, 2026, AAVE was trading at $99.91, with a 24-hour increase of 4.08%. It had previously briefly broken above $100 before pulling back.