Aave USDT lending and borrowing APY surges to 15%! Kelp DAO hack triggers a flight to safety, liquidity drained

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KelpDAO was attacked via a LayerZero cross-chain vulnerability, with the hacker minting 116,500 rsETH out of thin air and depositing it into Aave V3 to borrow a large amount of ETH, triggering a risk-averse user exodus that saw over $5.4 billion in assets withdrawn. Aave USDT borrowing APY surged to 15%, and deposit APY spiked to 13.4%. (Previous coverage: Kelp DAO Hacked: 10+ DeFi protocols including Ethena and ether.fi cut off LayerZero cross-chain bridge connections; AAVE and ZRO plummeted over 20% in a single day) (Background: Kelp DAO rsETH cross-chain bridge hacked for $292 million, triggering chain-reaction freezes on Aave and Compound) Data shows that the USDT borrowing APY has currently surged to 15.03%, with deposit APY reaching 13.43% (the same situation applies to USDC). The catalyst for this interest rate spike on the leading lending protocol Aave was the $290 million theft from Kelp DAO this morning. The attacker deposited over 110,000 rsETH as collateral into Aave to borrow WETH, resulting in nearly $200 million in bad debt for Aave. (Because the underlying assets for the deposited rsETH were effectively non-existent, it created systemic bad debt.) Aave uses the Jump Rate Model for interest rates. The core formula is Utilization Rate = Total Borrows / Total Supply. The optimal utilization rate (U_optimal) for the USDT pool is approximately 92%: below this threshold, borrowing rates rise linearly; once exceeded, the rate enters a "kink" and explodes almost exponentially. Credit Crisis in the LRT / Restaking Sector LRTs (Liquid Restaking Tokens) such as rsETH, ezETH, and weETH were originally used as "yield-bearing ETH" collateral across DeFi. The hacker proved that the minting process could be faked, leading the market to reprice the risk premium for all LRTs. Aave's Risk Management Capabilities Compromised Aave's risk management process for listing new LRTs may be questioned: the three lines of defense—LTV, Oracle, and Supply Cap—failed to block a non-price-based attack like "minting out of thin air." Future LRT listings will likely be more conservative, and the TVL growth rate of the entire restaking narrative will be slashed. Transmission of Stablecoin Borrowing Costs Aave USDT is one of the benchmarks for DeFi interest rates. A 15% borrowing cost means: - All delta-neutral strategies collapse (funding arbitrage, basis arbitrage, where the cost of borrowing USDT exceeds the yield) - Leveraged looping is passively deleveraged (cash flow for those looping ETH / stETH turns negative) - Borrowing for RWA protocols is cut off (carry trades that relied on borrowing USDT from Aave to buy U.S. Treasuries) While this is unlikely to last long, if the phenomenon is not eased in time, it could further deepen the risk of a liquidation cascade. The aftermath of the incident also affects LayerZero's OFT (Omnichain Fungible Token) cross-chain standard. This mechanism allows the same token to flow seamlessly across 20+ chains, but the shared trust infrastructure also means: one point of failure, the entire chain vibrates. Multiple protocols chose to directly cut connections with LayerZero OFT, emphasizing that they have no direct exposure to rsETH and that the suspension is a preventive measure, expected to be restored in the short term. These protocols include: Ethena, Lombard, Euler Labs, TRON DAO, ApeCoin/ApeChain, ether.fi, mETH Protocol, Solv Protocol, MOCA Foundation, and River, totaling over 10 protocols that collectively pulled the plug. 📍Related Reports📍 The damage to DeFi from this incident is not just the $292M bad debt figure, but the simultaneous exposure of structural problems at several levels. First, the credit premise of the LRT/Restaking sector has been punctured. rsETH represents a "yield certificate for restaked ETH," and its value is pre-supposed to come from the authenticity of the underlying staked assets. This attack proves that as long as there is a cross-chain bridge vulnerability at the minting end, the entire yield certificate system can be breached by non-price-based attacks, and such attacks leave no abnormal signals at the Oracle layer. Second, the transmission effect of stablecoin borrowing costs is already in play. Delta-neutral arbitrage positions borrowing USDT to go long on ETH have seen their cash flow turn negative as the borrowing APY hit 14.99%; leveraged looping is

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