decentralization

Cetus Protocol hacked for $220M; $162M frozen by Sui validators.
$6M bounty offered to recover $60M in stolen ETH and frozen funds. Hack exploited Cetus’s smart contract pricing oracle vulnerability. Sui’s validator freeze raises concerns over network decentralization.CETUS token drops 53%, SUI price falls 15% after exploit.
#CetusHack #SuiBlockchain #DeFiExploit #CryptoSecurity #Decentralization
On May 22, 2025, Cetus Protocol, a leading decentralized exchange on the Sui blockchain, suffered a $220 million exploit. Sui validators swiftly froze $162 million of the stolen assets, preventing further losses. The hack targeted vulnerabilities in Cetus’s smart contracts, draining liquidity pools and sparking debate about the Sui network’s decentralization.

Cetus paused its smart contracts immediately to limit damage. The attacker exploited a flaw in the Concentrated Liquidity Market Maker system, manipulating token prices with fake tokens. Approximately $60 million in stolen funds were bridged to Ethereum and converted to USDC, with two Ethereum wallets holding over $55 million in ETH.

Cetus offered a $6 million white hat bounty to the hacker. The deal allows the attacker to keep 2,324 ETH, worth $6 million, if they return the remaining funds. “Return the 20,920 ETH and frozen assets, and we’ll close the matter without legal action,” Cetus stated in a blockchain transaction message. Failure to comply could trigger legal and intelligence measures.

The Sui Foundation, alongside validators, blacklisted the attacker’s addresses. This rapid response recovered 73% of the stolen funds but raised concerns about centralized control. With only 114 validators, critics argue Sui’s ability to freeze funds undermines blockchain decentralization principles.

Swift Response Limits Damage

Sui validators acted within hours to block transactions from the hacker’s addresses. This froze $162 million in assets, protecting the ecosystem. Cetus collaborated with the Sui Foundation and cybersecurity firm Hacken to patch the vulnerability. Trading resumed after the fix.

The hack caused a 53% drop in CETUS token value and a 15% decline in SUI’s price to $3.65. Market volatility surged as confidence in Sui-based DeFi protocols wavered. The exploit exposed weaknesses in Cetus’s pricing oracle, which failed to detect the manipulation.

Cetus’s response mirrors a 2022 Solana project hack recovery strategy. Both projects, reportedly founded by Henry Du, used bounty offers to negotiate with hackers. The Solana case successfully recovered funds, raising hopes for a similar outcome. However, the hacker has not yet accepted Cetus’s offer.

Decentralization Debate Intensifies

The validator intervention sparked controversy. Freezing funds required coordinated action among Sui’s 114 validators, prompting criticism from the crypto community. Some argue this demonstrates centralized control, as validators can censor transactions. “Sui’s ability to freeze funds shows decentralization is just marketing,” one observer noted.

The Sui team explored an emergency whitelist function to bypass security checks, enabling the freeze. This move, while effective, fueled concerns about the network’s structure. With founders allegedly holding the majority of SUI’s supply, critics question the blockchain’s long-term decentralization.

Cetus continues working with law enforcement and cross-chain protocols to track the remaining $60 million. On-chain data shows the hacker’s wallet, identified as “0xe28b50,” holds 12.9 million SUI, valued at $54 million. Efforts to recover these funds are ongoing.

The incident marks the largest DeFi hack of 2025, surpassing previous breaches. It underscores persistent vulnerabilities in decentralized finance, particularly in smart contract design. Cetus’s swift action and validator coordination mitigated losses, but the event highlights the need for robust security measures.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has revealed an ambitious goal: to increase the Layer 1 gas limit by as much as 100 times. The move is meant to prepare the network for a new era of real-time decentralized computing.
His remarks followed a recent demonstration by Succinct Labs, who unveiled a functional version of their zkVM system — a solution for real-time computation verification on Ethereum’s execution layer.

🧠 Impressive Progress — But the Work Isn’t Done Yet
While Buterin praised the Succinct Labs team, he also pointed out several challenges that still need to be addressed:
🔹 The demo was tested only on average-case scenarios. For broader adoption, worst-case performance needs to be verified to ensure Layer 1 security.

🔹 The proof system lacks formal verification, which is essential for reliable long-term use.

🔹 The energy consumption for generating proofs is still too high — around 100 kW. Buterin envisions reducing that to 10 kW to allow small teams or individuals to run real-time proofs from home.

⛽ Targeting a 10–100x Gas Limit Increase
Buterin stated that the Ethereum team is actively working toward raising the Layer 1 gas limit by 10 to 100 times. The current average gas limit is about 36 million units, meaning this would increase it to 360 to 3,600 million units.
“We want 10–100x L1 gas limits,” Buterin wrote openly on X.

The gas limit on Ethereum dictates how many computational operations (like transactions or smart contract executions) can fit into a single block. A higher limit means greater network throughput — but also more demand on validators and network infrastructure.

📈 Gradual Increases — Without a Hard Fork
The last gas limit increase occurred in February 2024, when Ethereum surpassed 32 million gas units for the first time since 2021. The change was approved by 51.1% of validators and did not require a hard fork.
Since then, the limit has continued to rise, currently sitting around 36 million, up 20% year-over-year. If Buterin’s vision becomes reality, Ethereum could undergo a dramatic scaling transformation — enabling complex technologies like real-time proof systems to run directly on-chain.

🔍 Why the Gas Limit Matters
Verification systems like zkVM require far more gas than standard transactions. To make large-scale real-time computation feasible on-chain, Ethereum must expand its block capacity, without overloading the network or spiking transaction fees.

💬 Can Ethereum scale this aggressively without sacrificing decentralization and security? Will Layer 1 become a true computation layer?

#Ethereum , #Vitalik , #GAS , #Layer1 , #decentralization

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Snowden emphasized that Solana has technological advantages in terms of speed and efficiency, but at the cost of decentralization.

Solana put forth a good idea: What if we centralized everything? Faster, more efficient and cheaper. ....... No one uses it, except for memes and scammers, Snowden noted.
His criticism sparked a heated debate in the crypto community, emphasizing that the platform is focused on performance, not #decentralization , a fundamental principle of #blockchain . The Solan centralization debate is not new. Cryptocurrency advocates have long pointed out that the platform's governance structure is too centralized.
a short time ago, a prominent Cardano supporter presented evidence that over 73% of #Solana validators are KYC and AML compliant. These validators are subsidized by Solana's Stake-o-matic tool, which makes the network look like a traditional financial institution rather than a decentralized blockchain.
Despite these concerns, Solana's own token, #SOL , has seen significant growth: at the time of writing, its trading price has reached $145, up 10% over the past 30 days.
Snowden's criticism comes at a time when Solana is attracting attention for its low transaction costs and high processing speed, and industry analysts, including VanEck, predict that Solana's market value could rise sharply due to its high transaction efficiency, and SOL's price could rise to US$330. They forecast the SOL price to rise to US$ 330.
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