Arbitrum's plan to release 30,765.67 ETH frozen after the Kelp rsETH exploit has picked up a legal complication. In a new governance post, attorney Charlie Gerstein said the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York had authorized him to serve Arbitrum DAO with a restraining notice and writs of execution on behalf of judgment creditors in several cases against North Korea.

What changed

The underlying Arbitrum proposal, posted on April 25 by Aave Labs and other ecosystem participants, asks the DAO to approve sending the immobilized ETH into the coordinated DeFi United remediation effort meant to make affected rsETH holders whole.

Gerstein's May 4 post argues the frozen balance at address 0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000DA0 may qualify as property in which the Democratic People's Republic of Korea has an interest, including through entities such as APT-38 and the Lazarus Group. The notice says Arbitrum is forbidden from transferring that property without court direction.

No court has ruled on the merits of that claim in the Arbitrum forum itself. But delegates quickly started asking the Arbitrum Foundation, Offchain Labs, and the Security Council to weigh in before the vote moves further.

Why it matters

This turns a recovery vote into a harder governance and legal question. Delegates have largely supported returning the frozen ETH to exploit victims, yet the new notice raises the possibility that outside judgment creditors could challenge that release.

The conservative takeaway is simple: the funds are still frozen, the recovery plan is still pending, and the legal path now looks less straightforward than it did last week.