The Cetus team is collaborating with Sui ecosystem stakeholders to freeze and recover funds stolen in a recent hack. On May 22, $162 million of the over $220 million stolen from Cetus, a decentralized crypto exchange (DEX) on the Sui blockchain, has been frozen.
The DEX team is working with the Sui Foundation and other ecosystem entities to recover the remaining funds. The Sui Foundation confirmed that validators have identified addresses with stolen funds and are ignoring transactions on those addresses.
Extractor Web3 security notification tool reported that $63 million of the stolen funds were bridged to Ethereum. The Extractor team identified a wallet address used by threat actors to launder 20,000 Ether (ETH), valued at approximately $53 million.
The recovery efforts and asset freeze coordinated within the Sui ecosystem have drawn mixed reactions. One user noted that the ability of validators to freeze wallets raises questions about the network's censorship resistance and decentralization.
Cybersecurity remains a significant issue in the crypto space, with industry executives urging for robust defenses to avoid regulatory scrutiny. The Cetus hack is one of many incidents impacting crypto and Web3 in the first half of 2025.
This article is based on our author's analysis of materials taken from the following resources: theblock.co.