Retail Capitulation Hits AAVE, But Smart Money Starts Positioning: Here The Post-Crisis Market Structure

Aave entered April 2026 as DeFi’s most trusted lending protocol. It is ending the month navigating the most damaging crisis in its history — one that did not require a single line of its own code to be broken. Related Reading: Ethereum Withdrawals From Exchanges Just Hit An 8-Month Low: Find Out What Investors Are Waiting For The attack began at Kelp DAO, where an attacker exploited a vulnerability in the rsETH bridge to drain approximately $292 million in stolen tokens. What followed was not an