Key Takeaways:
Mantle Network’s proposal to lend up to 30,000 ETH to Aave DAO has formally advanced to a governance vote, adding a structured credit facility to the $314 million DeFi United rescue plan for the rsETH token.
The broader DeFi United framework is “the largest DAO coordination I have participated in,” Aave founder Stani Kulechov said, highlighting parallel governance processes at Arbitrum, Aave, EtherFi, Lido, and Mantle.
The credit facility joins a pool of pledged ETH and stETH now totaling over 1.13 million ETH, worth roughly $314.5 million. Major commitments include 30,766 ETH from Arbitrum DAO (pending a vote), a combined 30,000 ETH from Consensys and Joseph Lubin, a proposed 25,000 ETH from Aave’s treasury, and 5,000 ETH from Kulechov personally.
The multi-DAO effort aims to plug an estimated 68,900 to 118,000 ETH shortfall in rsETH’s backing after the April 18 KelpDAO bridge exploit. The incident, attributed preliminarily to the Lazarus Group, allowed an attacker to mint unbacked rsETH and use it as collateral to borrow approximately $190 million in assets from lending markets including Aave.
According to the proposal, known as MIP-34, Mantle Treasury’s loan would run for up to 36 months. It is structured to pay a floating yield benchmarked to the staking return on Lido’s stETH plus a 1% spread, allowing Mantle to earn yield on otherwise idle treasury assets.
Aave DAO would back the facility with 5% of its protocol revenue and at least $11 million worth of its native AAVE tokens. To align incentives, Mantle would also receive delegated governance rights over roughly 130,000 AAVE. The structure includes no penalty for early repayment and contains default protections to limit Mantle’s financial downside.
The Mantle loan is one piece of a complex, cross-chain recovery. A pivotal vote is also underway at the Arbitrum DAO to release 30,766 ETH that was frozen by its security council after the exploiter moved funds to an Arbitrum One address. The council’s decision to freeze the funds, while recovering roughly a quarter of the stolen assets, sparked debate about centralization and the immutability of Layer 2 networks.
If both the Mantle and Arbitrum proposals pass, they will represent two distinct methods of DAO-led crisis management: a structured, yield-bearing loan from one protocol treasury to another, and the release of recovered stolen funds via a governance vote. For users affected by the rsETH de-pegging, the combination of direct capital injections and credit lines provides a potential blueprint for future DeFi crisis responses.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
