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The largest DeFi hack of 2026 starts with an RPC node. Not a smart contract bug. Not a stolen key. A spoofed node and a forged transaction. And North Korea drained $300 million from Kelp DAO through LayerZero’s bridge in a single block.

Then the attacker went to Aave, borrowed against assets that didn’t exist, and created a bad debt crisis that locked Kain out of his own position.

That was Friday. By Sunday, North Korea had started laundering. By Tuesday, Arbitrum’s security council had done something no L2 has ever done: frozen $70 million of funds that had been stolen by upgrading a bridge contract mid-hack.

Kain Warwick, Taylor Monahan, and Luca Netz, with guest Odysseas Lamtzidis, take apart every layer: the DVN architecture flaw, the Aave contagion, the circuit breaker debate, and why the ‘code is law’ era may have just quietly ended.

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