DeFi Sector Suffers Over $600M in Losses as Kelp DAO Exploit Exceeds $292M

The decentralized finance sector has suffered over $600 million in losses over the past three weeks due to platform exploits. The most recent and largest exploit occurred on Saturday, when an attacker drained $292 million from Kelp DAO's cross-chain bridge.

This incident sent total value locked across DeFi to its lowest point in a year, falling to approximately $82.4 billion, down 25% from the $110 billion recorded at the start of 2026. The sector-wide losses have been driven by a string of platform exploits, including the roughly $285 million exploit of Drift Protocol earlier this month.

The Kelp DAO attacker manipulated a cross-chain message to drain rsETH from a bridge powered by LayerZero. Preliminary findings from security researchers have linked the attack to the North Korean hacking group Lazarus.