Arbitrum has frozen 30,766 ETH (about $71 million, equivalent to over €5 million) linked to the Kelp DAO exploit. A decisive move by the Security Council on Monday evening, although it comes after the attackers already stole $292 million through the LayerZero bridge on Saturday. Essentially, the council has recovered only a quarter of the stolen funds.

The action was coordinated with law enforcement authorities and moved the funds into a governance wallet, blocking access for the original exploit author. The freeze did not impact other users or applications on Arbitrum, which is important because such interventions on a blockchain are quite rare and controversial. Arbitrum is an Ethereum layer 2, so the Security Council has emergency powers for situations like this, but using them remains a delicate matter.

Now the situation is complicated. Kelp DAO and LayerZero are already arguing over who is responsible for the hack. LayerZero blames Kelp’s settings, while Kelp claims the default configuration of LayerZero was the problem. With $71 million frozen, the discussion on how to socialize the remaining losses becomes even more tense. Kelp is coordinating with partners on a recovery fund and evaluating next legal steps.

The real question is: where will the remaining $221 million go? It depends on where the attackers moved the funds and whether other blockchains with similar powers will decide to intervene. For now, this is a partial victory, but the dispute between protocols over responsibility is far from resolved.