Aave market freezes draw scrutiny over claimed $60M hacker loan

Aave’s market freezes have drawn scrutiny after a social media post claimed a Binance-linked attacker deposited $60 million in stolen USDT and borrowed roughly 19,762 ETH before issuer freezes took effect. Summary Emilio described the market freezes as a precaution to help issuers seize stolen funds. A separate post claimed the attacker borrowed 19,762 ETH against $60 million in USDT. Morpho’s Paul Frambot defended isolated lending markets as a way to contain financial contagion. Marc Zeller challenged Morpho’s protections, pointing to differences in emergency controls and loss coverage. Emilio, posting on X, said the intervention was intended to prevent attackers from using Aave deposits to complicate asset recovery. His explanation addressed concerns that the frozen markets themselves signaled a problem for the lending protocol. “It’s just a precautionary measure,” he wrote, explaining that dropping borrow caps to zero could have been sufficient to disable borrowing. Leaving deposits open, however, would have preserved another route for attackers to move stolen assets into the protocol, he said. Freezing the markets was intended to close that route while asset issuers pursued the...