DeFi Losses Surpass $600M as Kelp DAO Exploit Pushes TVL to One-Year Low

The Kelp DAO exploit on April 18, 2026, in which attackers minted 116,500 unbacked rsETH by poisoning a single LayerZero verifier node, has catalyzed more than $600 million in sector-wide DeFi losses over recent weeks, with cumulative damage across protocols approaching $1 billion. The downstream effect is now visible on-chain: total value locked across DeFi has collapsed to its lowest point in twelve months, per Def…