Cetus is providing a $6 million white hat bounty in an effort to recuperate $220 million in stolen digital belongings, whereas emergency responses from the Sui Community have raised issues about decentralization.
Sui-native decentralized trade (DEX) Cetus was exploited for over $220 million price of cryptocurrency on Might 22. Nevertheless, Cetus managed to freeze $162 million of the stolen funds shortly after.
Cetus has since supplied a white hat bounty of as much as $6 million for the exploiter for returning the stolen 20,920 Ether (ETH), price over $55 million, together with the remainder of the stolen funds at present frozen on the Sui blockchain.
“In trade, you’ll be able to hold 2,324 ETH ($6M) as a bounty, and we are going to contemplate the matter closed and won’t pursue any additional authorized, intelligence, or public motion,” Cetus wrote in a message embedded in a blockchain transaction on Might 22.
Nevertheless, Cetus will “escalate with full authorized and intelligence assets” if these belongings are off-ramped or despatched to cryptocurrency mixers and never returned promptly.
A white hat bounty is obtainable to moral hackers who search protocol vulnerabilities to forestall future exploits.
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Cryptocurrency hacks soared to $90 million throughout 15 incidents in April, a 124% enhance from March when hackers stole $41 million price of digital belongings.
In the meantime, the trade continues to be recovering from the biggest crypto hack, which noticed Bybit trade lose over $1.4 billion on Feb. 21, 2025.
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SUI considers emergency white checklist operate to override transactions
In the meantime, GitHub exercise reveals the Sui crew has thought of implementing an emergency whitelist operate that may permit sure transactions to bypass safety checks, doubtlessly to recuperate funds linked to the hack.
“It seems that the Sui crew requested each validator to deploy patched code so they may take away @CetusProtocol hacker’s $160 million by way of an unsigned tx,” stated Chaofan Shou, a software program engineer at Solayer Labs.
Nevertheless, an unnamed Sui engineer advised Shou that “validators held off deploying this and at present they’re solely denying tx that includes hacker’s objects,” he stated in a Might 22 X put up.
The transfer has sparked criticism amongst decentralization advocates, who argue that the flexibility to override transactions contradicts the rules of a decentralized permissionless community.
Regardless of widespread criticism within the crypto group, some noticed the speedy response as an indication of progress, not centralization.
“That is what actual world decentralization seems to be like. Not simply powerless, however responsive and aligned with the group,” stated pseudonymous crypto sleuth Matteo, including that decentralization “isn’t about standing by whereas folks get harm, it’s concerning the energy to behave collectively, while not having permission.”
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