KelpDAO rsETH Hack Triggers Fresh Scrutiny of DeFi Lending and L2 Growth Playbooks

ME News reported on April 19 (UTC+8) that crypto KOL benmo.eth said the theft involving KelpDAO's rsETH could drive broad changes across DeFi and the Layer 2 landscape. He highlighted six key takeaways: 1) Wrapped assets such as LRTs should not be viewed as comparable in safety to native assets. Lending platforms should not treat them as equivalent when pooling collateral. 2) L0 is likely to surrender part of its cross-chain market share. Assets including USDE and USD0 have already paused cross-chain activity on L0, and even if operations resume, the prior reputational damage may be difficult to reverse. 3) AAVE's perceived "invincibility" has been challenged, putting the security of unified lending markets back under whale-level scrutiny. Each additional collateral type increases risk for existing collateral, a structure benmo.eth argues disadvantages native assets. He expects v4-style upgrades and greater modularization to accelerate. Users are focusing more on lending protocols than platforms or curators, with higher business costs as a result. 4) The cost of attracting TVL on L2 networks is expected to rise further, with some of today's TVL likely rotating back to L1. 5) DeFi may pause aggressive expansion and return to a conservative, security-first posture, while also strengthening defenses against Anthropic Mythos scanning. 6) From a risk-management standpoint, large lending platforms may need to evaluate on-chain delayed withdrawals as a response mechanism for large redemption requests. Source: PANews