Arbitrum DAO Votes Overwhelmingly to Release Frozen Ether

The Arbitrum DAO has taken a significant step towards recovering nearly $71 million in frozen Ether tied to the Kelp DAO exploit. In a recent vote, over 90% of participating voters supported the proposal to release the funds into a multisig wallet managed by Aave Labs and other partners.

The proposed recovery plan would transfer 30,765 ETH into a controlled wallet, which is currently valued at around $71 million. The funds were frozen on April 21 after the attacker behind the Kelp DAO exploit moved assets onto Arbitrum One. Arbitrum's Security Council acted with input from law enforcement regarding the exploiter's identity and transferred the assets into a controlled wallet without affecting network activity or user applications.

The 'DeFi United' recovery initiative, which aims to partially restore rsETH backing, still faces a significant shortfall of around $174.5 million. Despite this, the vote is seen as a major milestone in the recovery effort and advances the proposal towards a binding on-chain governance vote.