North Korea terrorism creditors move to freeze $71M in Arbitrum-held ETH before DeFi United vote

Lawyers representing victims of three unsatisfied terrorism judgments against North Korea served Arbitrum DAO on May 1 with a restraining notice barring it from moving 30,766 ETH (~$71.1 million) — the funds frozen by the Arbitrum Security Council after the April Kelp DAO exploit. A New York federal court authorized the service, treating the ETH as property in which the DPRK holds an interest on the basis that LayerZero attributed the underlying hack to the state-sponsored Lazarus Group.

The plaintiffs are not Kelp DAO hack victims. They hold decades-old default judgments against North Korea — including the Kim family's ~$330M ruling tied to the abduction of Reverend Kim Dong-shik, the ~$169M Kaplan v. DPRK judgment linked to Hezbollah rocket attacks, and the ~$378M Calderon-Cardona ruling tied to the 1972 Lod Airport massacre. Combined face value across all three exceeds $877…