Latest $3.8 billion RWA recovery shows how quickly DeFi absorbed the KelpDAO shock

Active use of tokenized real-world assets in DeFi has returned to about $3.77 billion, close to the level visible before an April 18 exploit triggered a $13 billion decline across DeFi as a whole in 48 hours.

DefiLlama's tracking puts that recovery at roughly 95 days from the shock to July 22.

The failure consisted of a compromised verification setup that let attackers forge a cross-chain message and release roughly 116,500 unbacked rsETH, worth about $292 million, through KelpDAO's LayerZero multichain infrastructure.

Aave accepted the token as collateral, the attacker borrowed against it, and the resulting run pulled $8.45 billion out of Aave within two days, spreading to lending markets with little or no exposure to rsETH.

Posting a tokenized fund as collateral on Aave, Morpho, or Kamino allows the token to back a loan, supply a vault, or move through a cross-chain strategy, turning a static balance into working capital.

Dune's own framing describes this as a flywheel: each integration makes an asset more useful, more use draws in capital, and new capital funds further integration. Maple's syrupUSDC and syrupUSDT are good examples, now deployed across Ethereum, Solana, Monad, Base, Arbitrum, and Plasma.

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