Aave, Kelp DAO push Arbitrum vote to transfer $71M in frozen ETH

Aave and victims of the Kelp DAO hack have submitted an Arbitrum governance proposal to transfer 30,765 ETH, worth approximately $71 million, to an Aave LLC address, CoinDesk reported. The vote is scheduled to begin on May 15. This proposal aims to comply with a recent court order from Manhattan Judge Margaret Garnett. Even after the transfer, the funds cannot be used, moved, or managed without court permission. Blockchain analytics firms have attributed the hack to the Lazarus Group, a North Korean hacking organization. Attorneys representing families of North Korean terrorism victims argue that if the frozen funds are definitively linked to North Korea, they could be used to satisfy approximately $877 million in unpaid compensation judgments. Aave maintains that the ETH belongs to the hack victims, not the hackers, escalating the situation into an ownership dispute between the DeFi victims and the terror judgment creditors. Separately, this group of creditors has also sued the privacy protocol Railgun DAO in a different lawsuit, alleging it permitted the movement of North Korea-linked funds.