During the rsETH crisis, Aave experienced a withdrawal surge of $8.45 billion, leading to renewed controversy in the market over DeFi's risk management capabilities According to BlockBeats, on June 19th, after the attack on KelpDAO's rsETH cross chain bridge in April 2026, Aave experienced a withdrawal of approximately $8.45 billion in funds, but the core functions of the protocol did not malfunction, successfully completing one of the largest liquidity stress tests for DeFi to date. The crisis originated from the attack on KelpDAO's LayerZero cross chain bridge, resulting in the theft of approximately $292 million of rsETH, which has raised concerns in the market about the value and solvency of rsETH collateral. Due to the widespread use of rsETH as collateral assets for protocols such as Aave, risks quickly spread, leading to a concentration of users withdrawing their funds. Some markets even reached a utilization rate of 100%, and some users were unable to withdraw their funds immediately. Faced with tight liquidity, the Aave risk management team has activated an emergency freeze and parameter adjustment mechanism to limit the spread of risks. Aave founder Stani Kulechov sees this event as proof of DeFi's increased maturity, believing that the protocol continues to operate as designed under extreme pressure, demonstrating the resilience of a transparent, rule driven system on the chain. However, multiple independent analysts have pointed out that although Aave has avoided a systemic collapse, the incident has exposed the concentration risk, liquidity risk, and contagion risk brought by the highly interconnected protocols in the DeFi lending system. The behavior of large borrowers may have a greater impact on the stability of the entire system than expected by the model. Aave currently controls risks through multiple layers of protective measures such as loan to value (LTV) limits, liquidation thresholds, supply limits, borrowing limits, Isolation Mode, E-Mode, and governance mechanisms. These mechanisms have played an overall role in this crisis, but observers believe that governance response speed and risk models still need to be further optimized to cope with unknown systemic shocks in the future. Analysis suggests that this incident demonstrates that DeFi protocols can withstand large-scale runs without external assistance, but a single stress test cannot fully prove system security. As the composability between protocols continues to increase, an external asset or cross chain bridge problem may still rapidly evolve into a liquidity crisis for the entire ecosystem. [Original link]