lrt protocol review

KelpDAO

Liquid restaking protocol issuing rsETH with redemption, restaking, and cross-chain messaging dependencies.

under reviewcritical

TVL

$1.50B

Protocol reported or analyst-entered value.

Exposure

$980.0M

Mapped collateral and market exposure.

Dependencies

2 critical dependencies.

Markets

3 monitor signals configured.

Protocol facts

Static fields from the typed research record.

ProductsrsETH, Restaking, Cross-chain deployments

ChainsEthereum, Arbitrum One, Base

Categorylrt

Review statusunder review

Collateral, oracle, cap, and liquidation parameters by market.

1 rows

Market	Chain	Collateral	Oracles	LTV	Liquidation	Supply cap	Borrow cap	Utilization
rsETH issuance and deployments	Ethereum	rsETH WETH stETH	oracle:ethereum:kelp:rseth-rate	0%	0%	$880.0M	$0	73.0%

Findings separate the observed evidence from the analyst outcome.

Severity	Dimension	Finding	Outcome	Evidence	Sources
critical	bridge wrapper	Cross-chain invariant monitoring is mandatory	A bridge or watcher can release unbacked assets.	The brief identifies rsETH-style cross-chain release without matching source-chain burn as the motivating risk class.	KelpDAO docs LayerZero docs
high	exposure concentration	Collateral listings amplify bridge failures	Bad debt can accrue.	If rsETH is accepted as collateral, unbacked supply can move into lending bad debt.	KelpDAO docs

Inbound and outbound trust assumptions touching this protocol.

Severity	Direction	Edge type	Dependency path	Analyst label
high	outbound	accepts collateral	KelpDAO -> rsETH	KelpDAO rsETH issuance and deployments accepts rsETH as collateral or core liquidity
high	outbound	depends on	KelpDAO -> EigenLayer	KelpDAO rsETH inherits EigenLayer restaking assumptions
medium	outbound	accepts collateral	KelpDAO -> stETH	KelpDAO rsETH issuance and deployments accepts stETH as collateral or core liquidity
low	outbound	settles on	KelpDAO -> Ethereum	KelpDAO deployment inherits Ethereum settlement risk
low	outbound	accepts collateral	KelpDAO -> WETH	KelpDAO rsETH issuance and deployments accepts WETH as collateral or core liquidity

Public operational signals and review cadence.

Status	Monitor	Signal	Cadence
planned	Admin and guardian changes	Owner, guardian, Safe signer, threshold, and emergency role changes.	15 min after ingestion
planned	Oracle freshness	Heartbeat breaches, stale rounds, and large reference-market deviations.	5 min after ingestion
manual	Liquidity and cap shock	Supply cap utilization, borrow cap utilization, TVL drops, and liquidity depth changes.	Daily analyst review

Highest-severity paths that could transmit risk into or out of this protocol.

5 paths

Severity	Direction	Edge type	Dependency path	Analyst label
high	outbound	accepts collateral	KelpDAO -> rsETH	KelpDAO rsETH issuance and deployments accepts rsETH as collateral or core liquidity
high	outbound	depends on	KelpDAO -> EigenLayer	KelpDAO rsETH inherits EigenLayer restaking assumptions
medium	outbound	accepts collateral	KelpDAO -> stETH	KelpDAO rsETH issuance and deployments accepts stETH as collateral or core liquidity
low	outbound	settles on	KelpDAO -> Ethereum	KelpDAO deployment inherits Ethereum settlement risk
low	outbound	accepts collateral	KelpDAO -> WETH	KelpDAO rsETH issuance and deployments accepts WETH as collateral or core liquidity