The liquid restaking protocol said the compromised verifier was LayerZero's own infrastructure, and the setup it was faulted for running was LayerZero's onboarding default.
Tether leads an $8 million strategic investment in Abu Dhabi-based tokenization firm KAIO, which develops infrastructure to tokenize and distribute institutional funds on blockchain rails, lowering entry barriers for investors.
Coinbase and Bybit are exploring a partnership focused on tokenizing, safeguarding, and distributing U.S. stocks, though this does not involve Bybit's separate U.S. market entry plans.
Strategy (MSTR) has acquired 34,164 bitcoin for $2.54 billion, bringing its total holdings to 815,061 BTC. The company's stock dipped 2.5% in pre-market trading following the announcement.
Bitcoin ETFs attract nearly $1 billion in inflows, reinforcing bullish sentiment, while the KelpDAO hack sparks DeFi concerns. Meanwhile, traders build short positions amid geopolitical tensions, potentially setting up a short squeeze if prices stabilize.
As Bitcoin rallies ahead of the 2026 Las Vegas conference, historical data suggests the recent gains may be short-lived, with prices typically peaking before the event and declining afterward. Traders are now watching whether weakened market positioning will break the usual post-conference sell-off pattern.
Bitcoin trades near $75,000 ahead of a massive $7.9 billion options expiry, with significant call concentration and negative gamma potentially triggering volatility or a short squeeze toward the $71,000 max pain level.
Following the KelpDAO hack, Aave experienced a critical liquidity shortage as large withdrawals pushed stablecoin pools to full capacity, forcing trapped users to borrow against their own deposits at significant losses to access their funds.
A $292 million breach of KelpDAO's bridge triggered a $13.21 billion collapse in DeFi's total value locked within 48 hours, as stolen rsETH was used as collateral to drain major lending platforms like Aave.
LayerZero said the attackers compromised two RPC nodes the company's verifier relied on and DDoS'd the rest, with the attack working only because Kelp had ignored multi-verifier recommendations.
Cryptocurrency assets showed resilience amid renewed U.S.-Iran tensions, with Bitcoin, ether, and solana experiencing modest declines while oil and traditional markets reacted more sharply to escalating geopolitical risks.
A $292 million exploit of KelpDAO's rsETH token has exposed critical vulnerabilities in DeFi's interconnected infrastructure, raising fears of systemic risks and further eroding investor trust in the crypto sector.