Kelp DAO drained for $292M in 2026's largest exploit — Attacker extracted 116,500 rsETH (~18% of supply) via LayerZero bridge; wrapped ETH stranded across 20 chains. Emergency freezes triggered on Aave,
SparkLend, Fluid, Upshift...a cross-protocol contagion hitting 9 protocols.
The pattern by now is familiar. The defense in depth that DeFi has spent two years advertising has so far produced bridges that can be emptied faster than a governance channel can convene.
What's missing is not auditors. It is a monitoring layer that reacts on the attacker's clock rather than the committee's.
If you're not mastering agentic systems, higher intelligence to anticipate these types of attacks, you're simply NGMI in this industry going forward.