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KelpDAO developer Evercrest Technologies has taken LayerZero and CEO Bryan Pellegrino to court over a $292 million exploit of the protocol’s rsETH bridge, alleging that LayerZero-owned infrastructure was compromised and enabled attackers to mint tokens without corresponding deposits.
Evercrest’s statement of claim says the incident was not caused by a vulnerability in KelpDAO’s contracts but by a combination of poisoned RPC data, a compromised developer device and a 1-of-1 LayerZero DVN configuration.
The complaint alleges that an attacker compromised a LayerZero developer’s machine on March 6, 2026, before targeting RPC infrastructure used by LayerZero’s Decentralized Verifier Network on April 18. The manipulated RPCs allegedly caused LayerZero’s DVN to confirm that 116,500 rsETH had been locked on Unichain despite no actual lock taking place.
With LayerZero acting as the sole verifier for the Unichain Bridge, the false attestation allegedly resulted in the minting of roughly $292 million in rsETH on Ethereum. Evercrest says it identified the attack within an hour, suspended its LayerZero bridges, froze the attacker’s wallet and stopped a second attempted mint of 40,000 rsETH.
Evercrest also disputes LayerZero’s public account of the incident, alleging that LayerZero had reviewed and endorsed KelpDAO’s bridge configuration and instructed the company to use its own DVN in a 1-of-1 setup.
The complaint says LayerZero later blamed KelpDAO’s single-verifier configuration and Pellegrino said applications should not rely on a sole DVN, while Evercrest maintains it followed LayerZero’s written instructions.
Evercrest alleges the fallout included more than $650 million in user withdrawals, lower assets under management and fee revenue, a decline in KERNEL, the closure of the sbUSD vault and additional legal, forensic and migration costs. It is seeking damages under claims including negligent misrepresentation, negligent provision of services and defamation.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Vivian Nguyen. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
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