The Kelp DAO cross-chain bridge hacker has laundered nearly $220 million of stolen funds, with only $1.7 million remaining untransferred

According to The Defiant, approximately $220 million of unfrozen funds from the Kelp DAO cross-chain bridge attack has been almost entirely laundered by hackers. On-chain analyst Arkham Intelligence tracking shows that only about $1.7 million remains in the original attacker's wallet. This hacker is linked to North Korea and previously launched a $292 million cross-chain bridge attack on LayerZero in April.

Funds were transferred using privacy tools such as THORChain, Wasabi, Tornado Cash, and Umbra. The approximately $71 million in Ethereum frozen by the Arbitrum security council on April 20 is currently the only recoverable portion. A report released by LayerZero on May 18 attributed the attack to the North Korean group TraderTraitor. Kelp has recovered approximately 116,000 rsETH by migrating to Chainlink CCIP and the DeFi United program, while the Aave security module absorbed about $190 million in bad debt.