DeFi United's $71M Frozen ETH Recovery Vote Is Passing With Over 90% Approval

[madmax]

A joint governance proposal to unfreeze approximately $71 million in Ether locked since the Kelp DAO exploit is on track to pass with overwhelming support, with over 90.5% of participating tokens — representing 173.9 million ARB — cast in favor before the voting period closes Thursday at 6:54 PM UTC. Less than 1% of tokens voted against the motion. The proposal was co-authored by Aave Labs, Kelp DAO, LayerZero, EtherFi, and Compound, and seeks to release the 30,765 ETH that Arbitrum's Security Council froze on April 21 — just days after an attacker drained approximately 116,500 restaked ETH from Kelp DAO in an exploit worth between $290 million and $293 million at the time.

The strong vote outcome marks the end of the first round of governance signaling and moves the recovery effort to its next stage: a formal onchain Constitutional Arbitrum Improvement Proposal submitted through Tally, subject to a binding governance vote.If the final proposal passes, the frozen funds would be released to a designated recovery address controlled by a 3-of-4 Gnosis Safe multisig, with signers from Aave Labs, Kelp DAO, Certora, and EtherFi — a structure designed to distribute control across multiple trusted parties rather than concentrating it with any single protocol. The vote comes shortly after Aave Labs liquidated the Kelp DAO hacker's remaining rsETH positions on both Ethereum and Arbitrum, clearing another obstacle on the path to resolution. However, even a successful release of the frozen ETH will not fully close the gap: rsETH's backing still faces a shortfall of approximately 76,127 rsETH, currently worth around $174.5 million. The proposal argues that partially restoring rsETH's backing will nonetheless help stabilize broader DeFi market conditions — a position the 90%+ vote suggests the governance community broadly accepts.

[etfs]

90% voted yes but there's still $174M missing we move I guess.