‘Can’t Own What You Steal’ – Aave Files Emergency Motion Against Attempted Seizure of $71M in ETH

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Decentralized finance protocol Aave filed an emergency motion on Monday, stating that “a thief does not gain lawful ownership of stolen property simply by taking it.”

The team filed the motion in New York, USA, to vacate a restraining notice that had been served on Arbitrum DAO on Friday, May 1. The goal of that notice was to seize some $71 million in ETH that Aave says lawfully belongs to the victims of last month’s Kelp exploit.

“Those assets were recovered to be returned to users victimized in the April 18, 2026, exploit,” Aave writes in the tweet. “Freezing them harms the very people this recovery effort is designed to protect.”

Moreover, the motion asks for an expedited hearing and a temporary vacatur. This means they’re seeking an order that would set aside or nullify the notice served on Arbitrum, at least while it goes through a review and/or meets specific conditions.

Additionally, Aave disputed that Arbitrum was properly served with the restraining notice, arguing that the DAO is not an entity capable of being served with a legal process.

However, the Plaintiffs claims, the emergency notion continues, that the frozen $71 million belongs to North Korea and can therefore be seized. Aave rejects this claim, stating that these funds belong to the users who themselves were victimized during the April attack.

‘Can’t seize victims’ assets’

As a reminder, Aave operates on Arbitrum (Aave V3 on Arbitrum being its second-largest market), while the Arbitrum Security Council froze approximately $71 million in ETH linked to the theft of over 116,000 rsETH (valued around $292 million) from the Kelp DAO liquid staking protocol.

Gerstein Harrow LLP served Arbitrum DAO, claiming that over $877 million in default judgments against North Korea is owed to the law firm’s clients. The lawyers further claim that the North Korean hackers behind the Kelp exploit held the ETH, meaning that their clients have a legal claim over those coins.

Aave’s motion submitted to the court states that “Plaintiffs’ grievances against North Korea may well be righteous. But Aave LLC emphatically rejects the notion that those grievances can be lawfully addressed by restraining and seizing assets that belong to completely blameless third parties – namely users of [Aave Protocol], who are wholly unconnected to any alleged wrongdoing, and who have no known relationship to North Korea.”

Overall, the motion warned that this action and further delays could cause serious, irreparable, and far-reaching harm to the victims, the users, the entire industry, the DeFi ecosystem, as well as any future legal processes.

“In fact,” Aave’a lawyers argue, “Plaintiffs’ theory would encourage hostile actors with judgements against them, including hostile state actors, to engage in further thefts, if assets stolen in those exploits could be used to satisfy past judgements, or even simply to inflict costly legal battles on innocent third parties for political gain.”

Meanwhile, Aave service providers and ecosystem partners have launched DeFi United, a coordinated recovery initiative designed to restore the backing of rsETH following the exploit.

The post ‘Can’t Own What You Steal’ – Aave Files Emergency Motion Against Attempted Seizure of $71M in ETH appeared first on TechGaged.com.