Sui validators freeze majority of stolen funds in $220M Cetus hack

Cetus, a decentralized crypto trade (DEX) constructed atop the Sui blockchain community, stated $162 million of over $220 million stolen in a Could 22 hack has been frozen.

According to the Cetus staff, the DEX is working with the Sui Basis and different entities throughout the ecosystem to get well the rest of the funds. The Sui Basis additionally confirmed:

“Numerous validators recognized the addresses with the stolen funds and are ignoring transactions on these addresses till additional discover. The Cetus staff is exploring paths to get well these funds and return them to the group.”

The Cetus hack is the most recent in a string of such incidents impacting crypto and Web3 within the first half of 2025. Cybersecurity continues to be a significant difficulty in crypto, with many business executives calling for the sector to police itself and set up extra sturdy defenses or danger elevated regulatory scrutiny.

Associated: Germany seizes $38M in crypto from Bybit hack-linked eXch exchange

The Cetus hack: the story to date

On Could 22, the Cetus DEX was hacked in what’s believed to be a smart contract code exploit that noticed the DEX drained of roughly $223 million in consumer funds.

According to the staff behind the Extractor Web3 safety notification device, $63 million of the stolen funds had been bridged to the Ethereum community.

The Extractor staff additionally identified a pockets deal with ending in “AF16” utilized by the risk actors to launder 20,000 Ether (ETH), valued at roughly $53 million.

The restoration efforts and the asset freeze coordinated by totally different initiatives, platforms, and validators within the Sui ecosystem drew blended reactions from the crypto group.

“Excellent news for the victims, but when validators, 114 solely in whole, can freeze wallets when they need, it raises a significant query concerning the community’s censorship resistance. Sui is something however decentralized,” one consumer wrote in response.

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