In a significant turn of events, Cetus, a decentralized exchange operating on the Sui Blockchain, recently received overwhelming community support to reclaim assets that were stolen in a hack attack on May 22. This attack resulted in the loss of $223 million, with the assets subsequently frozen by validators. The community poll, which concluded on May 29, saw 90% of participants voting to transfer approximately $162 million in cryptocurrency from two hacker addresses to a multi-signature escrow wallet. The funds will be managed under the joint control of Cetus, OtterSec, and the Sui Foundation, aiming to restore all product functions and normalize operations for liquidity providers within a week.
Details of the Validator-Centric Recovery Plan
Validators are set to move the frozen coins to a “multisig” wallet, permanently barring hackers’ access and ensuring transparent oversight. Cetus will oversee the distribution process from this escrow wallet through a tailored compensation contract, matching on-chain data to restitute affected users based on their losses.
The team is also set to upgrade the Concentrated Liquidity Market Maker (CLMM) infrastructure to include an “emergency pool recovery” feature, creating an automatic protective layer against future vulnerabilities.
Once the decentralized exchange recovery operation concludes, it will restore the database, activate the updated CLMM contracts, and restart all halted modules, including liquidity provision (LP). Ecosystem participants are optimistic that the reopening will instigate a return of assets to their pools, bolstering market confidence. The project has committed to delivering an experience as close to “pre-attack” conditions as possible, particularly aiming to stabilize volume fluctuations in the initial weeks through incentive campaigns.
Rising Concerns Over Increasing Hack Attacks in the DeFi Ecosystem
The hack exploited a flaw in Cetus’s open-source CLMM library, leading to the swift siphoning of hundreds of millions of dollars. The team promptly patched the code and offered the hacker a white-hat bounty of $6 million in exchange for 20,920 WETH bridged to Ethereum 
$3,094 (approximately $56.3 million), although the offer remains unanswered. The community praises the speedy freezing of the hacker’s assets by validators as a rare yet crucial reflex in the crypto world.
This incident has pushed losses in decentralized finance protocols, or DeFi, above $5.3 billion, with notable events like Ronin’s $600 million and Wormhole’s $323 million hacks leading the lists. Security analysts highlight that not only does increasing code complexity attract attackers, but the abundant liquidity also serves as a lure. While open-source projects benefit from greater visibility, official voices stress the necessary depth in audit processes and promptness in post-attack recovery mechanisms.
The successful outcome of the community vote, alongside the transfer of frozen funds to a secure escrow and the clarification of the compensation timeline, accelerates Cetus’s path to recovery.
