Justin Sun Injects ₱1.22 billion ($20 million) Into Aave, Pushes Tron Expansion
After a North Korean hack stole ₱17.81 billion ($293 million) from KelpDAO on April 18, leaving Aave with ₱10.76 billion ($177 million) in unrecoverable bad debt, Tron founder Justin Sun and his HTX exchange are stepping in with a $20 million USDT injection to support the lending protocol.
Key Takeaway
Sun's $20 million contribution buys influence but Aave governance still controls whether Tron expansion happens.
Tron founder Justin Sun announced Monday he's injecting $20 million in USDT into Aave alongside his HTX exchange, calling for the lending protocol to expand to his blockchain.
Sun posted on X that the move shows Tron and HTX standing with Aave in a "DeFi United" effort. The contribution is part of a broader rescue initiative launched after North Korea stole $293 million from KelpDAO on April 18, when hackers deposited $200 million of the stolen funds as collateral on Aave, leaving the protocol with $177 million in unrecoverable bad debt after liquidations failed.
Aave service providers have secured approximately $160 million for coverage so far, covering about 80% of the needed amount. The DeFi United relief effort has drawn over 102,000 ETH from multiple participants including Arbitrum DAO, Mantle, Ether.Fi, Lido, and Kelp. Several major contributions remain pending governance votes, including a proposed 30,765 ETH from Arbitrum DAO and 25,000 ETH from Aave DAO itself.
Sun founded Tron in 2017, and it's now the fifth biggest blockchain for DeFi with $5.3 billion in deposits. The Aave-Chan Initiative ran a DAO vote on deploying to Tron, which passed, with a formal request for comment period that included risk feedback from Chaos Labs and LlamaRisk.
Whether Aave's governance will approve the Tron deployment remains an open question. Sun previously pleaded with the KelpDAO hackers to return stolen funds before they moved the assets through Aave. The $20 million injection establishes Sun's appetite for bringing Aave to Tron, but the protocol's governance process will ultimately decide if it translates into a live market on the blockchain.
This article was written based on reporting from Dlnews.
