Aave has begun a joint recovery effort with major cryptocurrency companies under the slogan “DeFi United” to stabilise the DeFi lending market, which has been shaken by a $292 million hack.

Coindesk reported on April 23 that “DeFi United” is focused on covering the collateral shortfall for hacked rsETH.

The incident began with a vulnerability tied to KelpDAO’s LayerZero integration process. The attacker exploited a bridge messaging system to mint 116,500 rsETH without collateral, then deposited about 90,000 of them as collateral on Aave and borrowed about $190 million worth of ETH and other assets on Ethereum and Arbitrum.

The impact damaged Aave’s collateral base. Deposits continued to leave as lenders rushed to withdraw available funds. After the incident, Aave’s total value locked fell by $10 billion.

Aave said several participants have already signalled their intention to support DeFi United and it plans to disclose additional support measures once commitments are finalised.

The Lido Labs Foundation first proposed allocating up to 2,500 stETH, worth about $5.7 million at current prices. The funds are expected to reduce the rsETH collateral shortfall and prevent forced liquidations across the broader lending market.

Etherfi also set out a plan to provide 5,000 ETH to protect users across DeFi and prevent bad debt. Aave founder Stani Kulechov (스타니 쿨레초프) also said he would support the effort with 5,000 ETH.

Earlier this week, the Arbitrum Security Council froze 30,766 ETH linked to the hack, worth about $71 million at the time. The remaining funds were moved through Thorchain into bitcoin, complicating recovery. Coindesk reported the response is currently focused on restoring rsETH collateral and limiting the spread of losses through a joint rescue approach rather than on recovering funds.