Key Highlights:
- Justin Sun announces on X that TRON and HTX will join the DeFi United.
- TRON and HTX will supply $20 million in USDT liquidity to support Aave V3 on TRON blockchain.
- The Kelp DAO exploit stemmed from a 1-of-1 DVN bridge setup on LayerZero on April 18.
Justin Sun, founder of Tron, announced today, April 27, 2026, on social media platform X that Tron and HTX will join the DeFi United. This initiative has marked a new chapter as to how Web3 players are now responding to protocol-level hacks. The main aim of this initiative is to shore up liquidity and restore user confidence and plug security gaps after a recent exploit that drained more than $290 million from the KelpDAO ecosystem.
TRON @trondao and HTX @HTX_Global stand together with AAVE @aave jointly supplying $20M USDT to AAVE Core V3 Market in a show of support to bring AAVE to TRON. DeFi United!
— H.E. Justin Sun 👨🚀 🌞 (@justinsuntron) April 27, 2026
What is DeFi United?
DeFi United is a coalition that is being spearheaded by Aave and led by Aave’s founder Stani Kulechov to coordinate a recovery plan after the Kelp DAO rsETH exploit.
The main idea is to not leave a single protocol to bear the full losses, and hence multiple DeFi players are coming together to support and restore backing for the affected asset and stabilize markets.
This framework is now being used to rebuild the rsETH backing on Aave, which temporarily lost its collateral value and peg after the attack.
How Much is Each Player Contributing?
The DeFi United contributors list has already become a symbol of collective responsibility in the DeFi ecosystem. The biggest announced pledges have been listed below:
- Arbitrum: Around 30,765 ETH (pending)
- Mantle: About 30,000 ETH (pending)
- Aave DAO: Around 25,000 ETH (pending, through a governance proposal)
- Stani Kulechov (personally): 5,000 ETH
- Ether.fi: 5,000 ETH (pending)
- Lido Finance: 2,500 ETH (pending)
- KelpDAO: 2,000 ETH
- Golem Foundation + Golemproject: 1,000 ETH
- The3D: 500 ETH
- bgdlabs + eboadom: 350 ETH
On top of these, TRON founder Justin Sun, via TRON DAO and HTX, is jointly supplying $20 million USDT to the AAVE Core V3 Market on TRON as a show of support for bringing Aave’s lending stacks to the TRON blockchain.
This not only adds liquidity but also signals that cross-chain DeFi protocols are willing to step in during crises, even beyond their own native chains.
Why Did Justin Sun and TRON Join DeFi United?
TRON’s involvement in DeFi United is part of a broader strategy to position TRON as a serious DeFi chain, not just a high-throughput payments network. By backing Aave’s v3 deployment on TRON with $20M USDT, TRON and HTX are helping on-ramp liquidity for stablecoins and lending, while also signalling that they stand behind the security and resilience of major DeFi projects.
In practice, this means more users can borrow and lend against supported assets on TRON, with Aave’s composability extending Ethereum-style lending depth to a cheaper, faster chain.
How Did the Kelp DAO Attack Happen?
The Kelp DAO exploit was a complex exploit. The attackers abused a bridge-security design quirk in LayerZero’s DVN (Decentralized Verifier Network) setup.
Projects that use LayerZero’s cross-chain messaging layer configure their “OApps” to rely on “1-of-1 DVN” configuration, meaning only one DVN operator needs to sign a message for it to be accepted.
KelpDAO’s adapter for moving rsETH between chains was set to require only one DVN (LayerZero Labs itself), with no backup or alternative signers.
Attackers manipulated or spoofed this single signer pathway, and tricked the system into accepting a fraudulent message. This caused a release of unbacked rsETH from Aave, and drained around $290 million in value.
According to various experts, it is advised to use at least two diverse DVNS so that no single operator becomes a single point of failure.
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