Aave court motion rejects North Korea ETH claim

Aave court motion filed today in New York asks a federal judge to unfreeze $71 million in ETH.

Aave LLC filed an emergency motion today in the Southern District of New York to vacate a restraining notice blocking 30,765 ETH, worth roughly $71 million, from returning to exploit victims.

The filing argues the assets belong to users of the Aave Protocol harmed in the April 18 Kelp DAO bridge exploit, not to North Korea or its alleged Lazarus Group hackers.

The restraining notice was served on May 1 by Gerstein Harrow LLP, representing three sets of judgment creditors holding $877 million in unpaid terrorism awards against North Korea. Their argument: because the attackers are linked to Pyongyang’s Lazarus Group, the recovered ETH qualifies as DPRK property subject to seizure.

Aave calls that theory “flatly wrong.” Aave founder Stani Kulechov said: “The global DeFi community came together to recover assets stolen from users, and we are not going to let those assets be wrongfully redirected.”

Why the legal theory matters for DeFi

Aave’s filing draws a clear legal line: “A thief does not gain lawful ownership of stolen property simply by taking it.” The motion argues that on-chain movement between addresses does not determine ownership, and that treating recovered funds as belonging to the thief would punish innocent users while rewriting basic property law.

As crypto.news reported, Arbitrum DAO had already secured more than 99% governance support for a plan to route the frozen ETH into the DeFi United recovery fund, which has raised over $314 million across multiple DAOs to restore rsETH’s backing. That plan now depends on the court’s decision.

The stakes extend beyond this case. If courts allow unrelated creditors to intercept DeFi recovery funds based on alleged state-actor attribution, future rescue efforts could be deterred entirely.

Aave’s motion asks the court to lift the notice immediately or require plaintiffs to post a $300 million bond while the case is heard. No hearing date has been set.