U.S. court approves Aave to transfer $71 million worth of ETH related to North Korean hacker attack case

Crypto News: On May 9th, U.S. Manhattan Federal Court Judge Margaret Garnett approved Aave’s asset recovery plan following the rsETH attack incident, allowing approximately $71 million worth of ETH previously frozen on Arbitrum to be transferred to a wallet controlled by Aave. Court documents show that this decision modifies the previous restraining order against the Arbitrum DAO, permitting the community to complete ETH transfers through on-chain governance voting, while exempting participants in the voting and execution of transfers from related legal liabilities. The incident originated from the rsETH attack in April, which has been widely attributed to the Lazarus Group associated with North Korea. Previously, lawyers representing families of North Korean terrorism victims had advocated for freezing the relevant assets and attempting to include them in the approximately $877 million unpaid judgment compensation. The Arbitrum community has voted in a Snapshot poll to support returning the frozen ETH to Aave’s recovery plan, but the actual transfer still requires formal on-chain governance approval. The report notes that this case is also part of the U.S. efforts to recover North Korea-linked crypto assets. In addition to Arbitrum, the plaintiffs previously sued privacy protocol Railgun DAO and named Digital Currency Group (DCG) as one of the defendants, accusing it of participating in related governance and economic activities.