Cetus is providing a $6 million white hat bounty in an effort to recuperate $220 million in stolen digital property, whereas emergency responses from the Sui Community have raised considerations about decentralization.
Sui-native decentralized alternate (DEX) Cetus was exploited for over $220 million value of cryptocurrency on Could 22. Nonetheless, Cetus managed to freeze $162 million of the stolen funds shortly after.
Cetus has since provided a white hat bounty of as much as $6 million for the exploiter for returning the stolen 20,920 Ether (ETH), value over $55 million, together with the remainder of the stolen funds at present frozen on the Sui blockchain.
“In alternate, you’ll be able to hold 2,324 ETH ($6M) as a bounty, and we’ll think about 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 Could 22.
Nonetheless, Cetus will “escalate with full authorized and intelligence sources” if these property 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% improve from March when hackers stole $41 million value of digital property.
In the meantime, the trade remains to be recovering from the biggest crypto hack, which noticed Bybit alternate 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 workforce has thought of implementing an emergency whitelist operate that will enable sure transactions to bypass safety checks, doubtlessly to recuperate funds linked to the hack.
“It seems that the Sui workforce requested each validator to deploy patched code so they may take away @CetusProtocol hacker’s $160 million by way of an unsigned tx,” mentioned Chaofan Shou, a software program engineer at Solayer Labs.
Nonetheless, an unnamed Sui engineer instructed Shou that “validators held off deploying this and at present they’re solely denying tx that entails hacker’s objects,” he mentioned in a Could 22 X submit.
The transfer has sparked criticism amongst decentralization advocates, who argue that the power to override transactions contradicts the rules of a decentralized permissionless community.
Regardless of widespread criticism within the crypto group, some noticed the fast 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,” mentioned pseudonymous crypto sleuth Matteo, including that decentralization “isn’t about standing by whereas folks get damage, it’s in regards to the energy to behave collectively, without having permission.”
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