Aave (AAVE) fell more than 20% on April 19 after the KelpDAO rsETH exploit led to a wave of whale selling and a record spike in ETH usage via the lending protocol.
The token fell from roughly $115 to below $92 in hours as major holders of the coin rushed to exit positions. Aave’s ETH pool achieved 100% utilization, effectively blocking remaining depositors from withdrawing.
Whales dump millions into AAVE
As of this writing, AAVE is trading at $91.89, down 20.44% over the past 24 hours. With this, the altcoin retested levels last seen on April 13.
The data on the chain is tracked by Loconchine It showed three major wallets selling AAVE within hours of the exploit being published.
- The wallet identified as smaugvision sold 20,015 AAVE for $2.06 million USD at an average of $103 per token.
- second whale At address 0xFC56, another 20,000 AAVE were offloaded for $2.05 million USD at the same average.
- The third wallet, 0xA2E4, sold 19,666 AAVE worth $1.95 million, converting the proceeds to 505.65 ETH and 10.11 ETH. WBTC For an average of less than $99.
Combined, the three wallets have minted nearly 60,000 AAVE tokens worth more than $6 million.
Exodus of $5.4 billion from Ethereum
Beyond the AAVE sell-off, vendors have begun withdrawing Ethereum (ETH) from Aave on a large scale. It is said that more than $5.4 billion is in ETH Leave the protocol Within hours.
Tron founder Justin Sun It withdrew 65,584 ETH worth approximately $154 million, further draining liquidity.
The mass withdrawal pushed Aave’s ETH utilization rate to 100%, meaning the pool He had no liquidity left for new withdrawals.
Borrowing rates are expected to rise sharply as the protocol’s interest rate curve penalizes high usage.
Whether Aave’s Umbrella support and rsETH market freeze can stabilize confidence remains the central question for depositors still locked into the pool.
Aave says Impact is limited to the V3 ETH market
Aave told BeInCrypto that the situation is limited to the V3 ETH market only, and V4 is completely unaffected.
“On the Aave side, the situation has been contained to the V3 ETH market only. On the Aave side, V4 is completely unaffected,” the Aave team said in an email shared exclusively with BeInCrypto.
The team said that it moved quickly while taking precautionary measures. Freeze rsETH reserveremoving their ability to borrow, and temporarily lowering the loan-to-value ratio on ETH to zero.
Stablecoin reserves and all other assets operate normally without exposure to the event.
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