Aave đang tự tay nhường lại ngôi vương cho vay DeFi vì sự ngu ngốc của chính mình

Original: Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)

Author: Azuma (@azuma_eth)

292 million USD – that's the total amount of rsETH stolen from Kelp DAO; 17.2 billion USD – that's the scale of funds flowing out of Aave since the incident.

Aave, due to its incredibly poor crisis management strategy, is allowing community panic to fester for days on end, subsequently losing its greatest advantages in the lending arena: hundreds of billions of dollars in total value locked (TVL) and the user perception as the "safest DeFi protocol."

• Odaily Note: For background, please refer to: DeFi Loses $292 Million Again in Hack; Is Even Aave No Longer Safe? (https://www.odaily.news/zh-CN/post/5210347); The Three-Way Game Under the $290 Million Hole: Who Pays – Aave, L0, or Kelp? (https://www.odaily.news/zh-CN/post/5210369).

What Did Aave Do Wrong?

We won't dwell on the details of the Kelp DAO hack, nor is it productive to critique Aave's initial high LTV for rsETH. The focus here, from the perspective of a long-term AAVE user, is Aave's response strategy after the incident.

First, regarding the scale of bad debt, Aave itself calculated. Depending on the treatment of rsETH, two bad debt scenarios were possible: If the stolen losses were written down against all circulating rsETH, an estimated $123.7 million in bad debt would occur; if the value of mainnet rsETH was protected and losses fully allocated to the Layer 2 mapped version, an estimated $230.1 million in bad debt would occur.

In either scenario, Aave, with its Umbrella, DAO treasury, and team funds, has the capacity to cover the losses. I understand Aave's reluctance to pay entirely, wanting the primary responsible party (Kelp DAO) and the secondary party (LayerZero) to contribute more capital. However, the issue is that they think the same: “Aave is so wealthy and in such an awkward position, they should bear more responsibility.” So, a swift consensus among these three parties seems unlikely, meaning a happy solution won't appear immediately.

But users cannot wait that long. Aave's yield rates have never been particularly competitive. Users deposit in Aave for its reputation, security, and liquidity. Yet, during the most tense days post-incident, Aave failed to provide users with any kind of backstop commitment. Instead, it deflected blame by insisting "our code is fine" and "Aave cannot control how rsETH is accounted for."

Consequently, panic continued to fester within the community. Users scrambled to exit, withdrawing funds directly if possible, or borrowing from other pools if they couldn't, escalating the impact. Thus, Aave now faces a dual crisis: continuous capital flight and liquidity drying up in several pools due to maxed-out utilization rates.

This awkward situation could have been avoided (or at least been less severe). Since Aave can afford the loss, why not inject confidence into the community from the start to prevent a bank run? It's a maximum bad debt of $230 million (potentially less), not an amount Aave would have to bear alone. They could have promised coverage and argued with LayerZero and Kelp DAO later.

Now, to avoid committing to a maximum $230 million bailout, Aave watched $17.2 billion in deposited funds flee (a number likely still growing), not to mention the decline in AAVE's token price. This is an unquestionably disastrous trade-off.

To make matters worse for Aave, the worse its position becomes, the more comfortable LayerZero and Kelp DAO get. They will assume Aave has even greater incentive to resolve the issue quickly, putting Aave at a strategic disadvantage.

Reaching this point, Aave has only itself to blame.

Behind Aave, Spark is Lying in Wait

While Aave is grappling with its headaches, competitor Spark is thriving. The irony is that Spark is a competitor Aave "nurtured itself."

Spark was originally a lending protocol forked by Sky (formerly MakerDAO) from Aave V3's open-source code, essentially using the same underlying logic. In return, Spark shared profits with Aave, but Aave later accused Spark of breaching this agreement. Combined with diverging roadmaps, the two are now pure competitors.

Three months before the Kelp DAO hack, Spark had already removed support for rsETH (details in: Same Day, Different Fate: Aave Embraces rsETH, Loses Nearly $200 Million; Spark Exits Unscathed (https://www.odaily.news/zh-CN/post/5210373)). Call it strategic conservatism, rigorous risk management, or sheer luck – the result is Spark was completely unaffected by this incident. On this point alone, Spark can relentlessly attack Aave's "safest DeFi" label.

Consequently, Spark became a safe haven for fleeing Aave funds. Since the incident, Spark's TVL has increased by nearly $2 billion (green section in image below). On the day of the hack, Justin Sun withdrew 53,665 ETH (worth $124 million) from Aave and deposited it into Spark, subsequently bringing his total deposit to $1.3 billion. In DeFi, you should really learn from Sun's moves.

On April 23rd, UpBit officially listed the Spark (SPK) Korean Won trading market. SPK surged over 80% intraday on this news, significantly narrowing the market cap gap with AAVE.

Even fish pond founder Wang Chun lamented on X: "In the past year, I received 83.7 million SPK rewards from Spark and sold them on CoWSwap for 663 ETH and $1.4 million. Now I kind of regret it."

Spark clearly recognized this as a golden opportunity to seize market share from Aave. Since the incident, Spark Strategy Lead MonetSupply has become one of the most vocal KOLs on the matter, posting dozens of times daily. While his comments certainly helped public understanding, they objectively fueled panic surrounding Aave.

But this is raw business competition. MonetSupply simply made the right call.

Aave is Losing its DeFi Lending Throne

Early on April 24th, perhaps realizing the severity of the situation, Aave founder Stani announced on X a relief plan called DeFi United, involving partners like LayerZero, Ethena, ether.fi, Ink Foundation, Golem Foundation, Trydo, etc. Stani himself will donate 5000 ETH to address the issues.

But the capital has already fled, and user trust is shattered. Just this belated statement is unlikely to quickly recover the TVL and confidence.

The DeFi lending landscape has long been a "one superpower, many strong competitors" structure, with Aave holding a seemingly unshakeable lead. Now, Aave has voluntarily ceded its throne. Behind it, challengers are surging. Besides the red-hot Spark, competitors like Morpho and Jupiter Lend are also looking to snatch market share from Aave.

Last year, Stani bought a five-story luxury mansion in London for about $30 million, one of the most expensive transactions in the UK's sluggish luxury property market. I don't know if it's a "jinx" or something, but precedents like Su Zhu show that big spenders in this circle often seem to attract bad luck.

I can't guess what Stani is thinking in his five-story mansion right now.