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Asia DeFi Desks Pivot to Chainlink After KelpDAO-Lazarus Hit

6/9/2026

Asia DeFi Desks Pivot to Chainlink After KelpDAO-Lazarus Hit HONG KONG — Three weeks after a single line of bridge configuration cost the cross-chain economy roughly $292 million, the strategic fallout is being priced not in Manhattan but along the Asia restaking corridor.

Singapore family offices, Tokyo prop desks and Hong Kong proprietary-trading shops that had quietly accumulated rsETH and its yield-bearing cousins now find themselves at the centre of a regional rewrite of how decentralised value moves between chains.

The April 18 exploit on KelpDAO's LayerZero-powered Omnichain Fungible Token bridge drained about 116,500 rsETH.

Attackers, identified by multiple post-mortems as operatives connected to North Korea's Lazarus Group, exploited a 1-of-1 Decentralized Verifier Network — a configuration in which one verifier alone signs off on high-value cross-chain messages.

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