30-5-2025 – Stakeholders have thrown their weight behind Cetus’ initiative to retrieve millions in stolen digital assets. The decentralised exchange, operating on the Sui blockchain network, garnered substantial support for its recovery strategy after last week’s devastating $223 million security breach.
The breakthrough came as an on-chain governance vote reached a decisive conclusion on 29 May, with nine out of ten participants endorsing the proposal to unfreeze compromised assets. The majority of the purloined funds, approximately $162 million, had been successfully quarantined by network validators in two addresses linked to the perpetrator.
Under the proposed framework, a triumvirate consisting of Cetus, cybersecurity specialists OtterSec, and the Sui Foundation will oversee the recovered assets through a multi-signature trust arrangement. This transfer will be facilitated through a comprehensive network upgrade.
The genesis of this crisis can be traced to 22 May, when malicious actors exploited a vulnerability within Cetus’ Concentrated Liquidity Market Maker (CLMM) architecture. In response to the incident, the protocol’s development team implemented critical patches to address weaknesses in their open-source library code.
Looking ahead, Cetus has outlined ambitious plans to fortify its infrastructure. These include the implementation of a purpose-built compensation contract and the introduction of an emergency pool recovery mechanism within their CLMM framework. The exchange anticipates a comprehensive system restoration within approximately seven days, encompassing data recovery and the resumption of suspended services.
In a bid to salvage additional assets, Cetus extended an olive branch to the perpetrator, offering a $6 million white-hat bounty for the return of 20,920 ETH that had been transferred to the Ethereum network. This incident adds to the mounting toll of decentralised finance breaches, which have already resulted in losses exceeding $5.3 billion, including the notorious Ronin and Wormhole exploits.
