On the Same Day Aave Introduced rsETH, Why Did Spark Choose to Exit?
On April 18, Kelp DAO's cross-chain bridge was exploited, resulting in the malicious minting of 116,500 unbacked rsETH. The attacker deposited these into Aave and borrowed WETH, creating a potential bad debt of approximately $195 million. Aave’s Guardian quickly froze the market, but the protocol’s insurance could only cover about 25% of the loss.
In contrast, SparkLend, a lending protocol in the MakerDAO ecosystem, suffered no direct losses. This was not due to superior foresight but rather a preemptive governance decision. On January 29, Spark executed a governance action to discontinue new rsETH supply, citing low usage and high concentration from a single wallet. The same day, Aave expanded its rsETH market by enabling E-Mode with a 93% LTV to attract more deposits.
Spark’s risk management framework is designed to remove assets with low usage or poor risk-adjusted returns, regardless of external security concerns. Aave’s decision was growth-oriented, aiming to boost WETH utilization and attract capital.
Spark also employs additional safeguards: rate-limited supply and borrow caps that would have limited the scale of such an attack, and a robust oracle system using the median of three price feeds. These mechanisms systemically contain the maximum exposure to any single risk event, demonstrating a fundamentally different approach to risk than Aave’s growth-first model.
marsbit04/20 08:14
