- Cetus, a decentralized exchange on the Sui Blockchain, reported it froze $162 million following a major hack.
- Hackers stole roughly $223 million from Cetus on May 22, mainly using a smart contract vulnerability.
- The team has partnered with the Sui Foundation and other ecosystem projects to work toward full fund recovery.
- A portion of the stolen assets, including $63 million, was moved to the Ethereum network, with $53 million traced to a specific wallet address.
- The incident has raised questions about blockchain decentralization after validators froze related accounts to prevent further losses.
Cetus, a decentralized crypto exchange (DEX) operating on the Sui blockchain, experienced a cyberattack on May 22 that led to the theft of approximately $223 million in user funds. The exploit targeted a vulnerability in the platform’s smart contract code, allowing Hackers to withdraw large sums.
The team behind Cetus announced that $162 million of the stolen funds has been frozen, working in coordination with the Sui Foundation and other involved projects to identify and recover the assets. The Sui Foundation confirmed that validators — the network participants who approve blockchain transactions — are refusing to process transactions from certain addresses linked to the stolen funds. “A large number of validators identified the addresses with the stolen funds and are ignoring transactions on those addresses until further notice. The Cetus team is exploring paths to recover those funds and return them to the community,” stated the Foundation in an official update.
Investigation efforts have shown that $63 million of the compromised assets were moved to the Ethereum blockchain. According to the Extractor Web3 team, a wallet address ending in “AF16” was used to launder 20,000 Ether — valued at about $53 million — connected to the hack. Extractor has provided additional transaction details on Etherscan.
The broad network response, which included multiple validators freezing the movement of the stolen funds, elicited different reactions within the crypto community. Some praised the fund recovery efforts, while others expressed concerns about censorship resistance, noting that such intervention challenges the idea of full decentralization. One user commented, “Good news for the victims, but if validators, 114 only in total, can freeze wallets when they want, it raises a major question about the network’s censorship resistance. Sui is anything but decentralized,” in a public post.
This incident follows similar high-profile hacks in 2025 and continues to highlight the ongoing risks of Cybersecurity for digital asset platforms. Industry leaders are calling for stronger self-regulation and security measures to prevent future incidents and possible regulatory intervention.
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