Cetus offers $6M bounty after $220M hack as Sui faces decentralization debate

11 hours ago

Cetus is offering a $6 cardinal achromatic chapeau bounty successful an effort to retrieve $220 cardinal successful stolen integer assets, portion exigency responses from the Sui Network person raised concerns astir decentralization.

Sui-native decentralized speech (DEX) Cetus was exploited for implicit $220 million worthy of cryptocurrency connected May 22. However, Cetus managed to frost $162 million of the stolen funds soon after.

Cetus has since offered a achromatic chapeau bounty of up to $6 cardinal for the exploiter for returning the stolen 20,920 Ether (ETH), worthy implicit $55 million, on with the remainder of the stolen funds presently frozen connected the Sui blockchain.

“In exchange, you tin support 2,324 ETH ($6M) arsenic a bounty, and we volition see the substance closed and volition not prosecute immoderate further legal, intelligence, oregon nationalist action,” Cetus wrote successful a connection embedded successful a blockchain transaction connected May 22.

However, Cetus volition “escalate with afloat ineligible and quality resources” if these assets are off-ramped oregon sent to cryptocurrency mixers and not returned promptly.

A white chapeau bounty is offered to ethical hackers who question protocol vulnerabilities to forestall aboriginal exploits.

Cryptocurrency hacks soared to $90 cardinal crossed 15 incidents successful April, a 124% summation from March erstwhile hackers stole $41 cardinal worthy of integer assets.

Meanwhile, the manufacture is inactive recovering from the largest crypto hack, which saw Bybit speech lose implicit $1.4 billion connected Feb. 21, 2025.

SUI considers exigency achromatic database relation to override transactions

Meanwhile, GitHub enactment shows the Sui squad has considered implementing an exigency whitelist relation that would let definite transactions to bypass information checks, perchance to retrieve funds linked to the hack.

“It appears that the Sui squad asked each validator to deploy patched codification truthful they could instrumentality distant @CetusProtocol hacker’s $160 cardinal via an unsigned tx,” said Chaofan Shou, a bundle technologist astatine Solayer Labs.

However, an unnamed Sui technologist told Shou that “validators held disconnected deploying this and presently they are lone denying tx that involves hacker’s objects,” helium said successful a May 22 X post.

The determination has sparked disapproval among decentralization advocates, who reason that the quality to override transactions contradicts the principles of a decentralized permissionless network.

Despite wide disapproval successful the crypto community, immoderate saw the accelerated effect arsenic a motion of progress, not centralization.

“This is what existent satellite decentralization looks like. Not conscionable powerless, but responsive and aligned with the community,” said pseudonymous crypto sleuth Matteo, adding that decentralization “isn’t astir lasting by portion radical get hurt, it’s astir the powerfulness to enactment together, without needing permission.”