Aave secures emergency hearing to void ‘catastrophic’ restraining order

An emergency hearing on Wednesday could determine whether the relatives of a slain minister are entitled to $71 million in crypto that was nearly stolen by North Korean hackers last month.

The hearing, scheduled by a federal judge in New York, is part of a fast-moving legal skirmish that has complicated an industry-wide effort to compensate the victims of an April 18 hack allegedly executed by North Korean hackers.

That exploit saw hackers make off with nearly $300 million in rsETH stolen from the Kelp DAO protocol. The hackers then used the stolen crypto as collateral to borrow other, more liquid assets on Aave, the largest protocol in decentralised finance.

But several organisations were able to freeze some of the stolen crypto before it could be laundered. Arbitrum DAO was the most successful, freezing crypto worth about $71 million.

Arbitrum DAO is poised to send that crypto to a recovery fund meant to compensate users affected by the hack. But other people who have been victimised by North Korea are now trying to claim the frozen assets, citing decade-old, multimillion-dollar legal judgments against the pariah nation.

On Friday evening, attorneys for those victims served Arbitrum DAO a restraining order forbidding the cooperative from transferring any “property interests of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.”

The victims include Han Kim and Yong Kim, relatives of a South Korean minister who was abducted and presumably killed by North Korean agents in…