FT: DeFi investors flee after hacks
- Roughly $14 billion has left DeFi in recent weeks after the KelpDAO and Drift hacks, with Aave at the center of the panic. (pymnts.com) - The sharpest detail is Aave’s drawdown: its TVL fell from about $23 billion to roughly $15 billion after stolen rsETH hit lending markets. (defillama.com) - What makes this matter is the pattern: April 2026 became DeFi’s worst hack month this year, reviving old doubts about on-chain security. (coindesk.com)
DeFi is supposed to remove middlemen from finance. But the tradeoff is brutal — when the code or the plumbing breaks, there is often n(pymnts.com)vestors have yanked roughly $14 billion from decentralized-finance protocols after two major hacks — one tied to KelpDAO and one to Drift — shook confidence across the sector. (pymnts.com) ### Why did money leave so fast? Because this was(coindesk.com)ateral to borrow against it. That turned one protocol’s breach into a market-wide stress event — more like a bank run than an isolated hack. (coincentral.com) ### What actually broke at KelpDAO? The key issue was a cross-chain bridge failure. Attackers stole about 116,500 rsETH — worth roughly $292 million to $293 million — from KelpDAO’(pymnts.com)onnect different blockchains and add extra moving parts. More moving parts means more places to fail. (coincentral.com) ### Why did Aave get dragged in? Because stolen assets do not just sit there. The attacker posted the rsETH on Aave and borrowed o(coincentral.com)nasty version of DeFi contagion — one hacked token can suddenly threaten a lending market that never wrote the bad code in the first place. (coincentral.com) ### How bad was the withdrawal wave? Big enough to show up in system-wide numbers. DefiLlama data shows total DeFi value locked falling from rou(coincentral.com)n to $12 billion in TVL in the immediate fallout before stabilizing somewhat. That is the clearest sign this was a confidence shock, not just a headline shock. (news.bitcoin.com) ### Where does Drift fit in? Drift was the other big hit in April. Reports around the FT stor(coincentral.com)ed for the vast majority of April’s DeFi losses, which is why the whole sector suddenly felt fragile again. (pymnts.com) ### Is this just bad luck? Not really. The pattern is shifting from simple smart-contract bugs to attacks on bridges, keys, infrastructure, and operational weak spots. That matters because audit(news.bitcoin.com)centralized” does not mean “secure by default.” (coindesk.com) ### Why are North Korea links such a big deal? Because they change the risk calculation. TRM Labs says North Ko(pymnts.com)exploits. That tells investors they are not just facing random thieves — they may be facing sophisticated state-backed attackers with patience, money, and time. (beincrypto.com) ### So what is the real takeaway? The immediate story is outflows. The bigger story is that DeFi still struggles with the part(coindesk.com)ets, every big exploit will keep turning into a sector-wide trust event. (ft.com)
