A few days ago, a very damaging event occurred for the crypto ecosystem, where the largest of the #SUİ , CETUS, was compromised, allowing a hacker to steal more than $220 million in crypto assets, setting off alarms in the community. Herein lies the dilemma, since Cetus immediately contacted the SUI team and they were able to freeze a large amount of the stolen amount, but with this the role of a “decentralized network” came into debate. What happened during the hack and how were they able to stop the stolen money from leaving the network? Let's explore.
On May 22, the Cetus DEX was hacked due to an exploit in the smart contract code, causing the loss of over $220 million in user funds in just a few hours.
At that point, the situation became chaotic for SUI network users, who were unaware of what was happening. The #memecoins , even the SUI network token itself, began to fall. No one could do anything; only a few were able to realize what was happening and began moving their funds to a safe place.
Meanwhile, once the hacker drained the CETUS liquidity pool, he thought he was unstoppable, and that the next logical step was to move the stolen money out of SUI and then make it disappear via a #Criptomonedas mixer. He was wrong...
To start the process of withdrawing money off the chain, he first made a bridge to Ethereum, converting only 60 million dollars to ETH, as he saw that he could continue doing so, he decided to go for the rest, but his plan was frustrated by the preventive actions of the SUI network.
What SUI did, with the help of its validators, was ban the #Hacker wallet from the network (ignoring the hacker's transactions), thus freezing $162 million (the remaining money) in the middle of the transaction. So now those $162 million are practically stranded in a wallet.
This is where the dilemma of centralization or decentralization of a Layer 1 blockchain network comes in. Until now, no one knew that the SUI network could do this (or that it could be done quickly among its validators). This doesn't happen automatically and requires consensus among validators. It finally happened, and speculation began about the role of "decentralization in SUI."
This is a topic that needs to be handled with caution, because once this type of emergency action is taken to "save something," there's no going back. Who knows if they might do the same in other cases in the future?
This is why there's been a whole debate about current and future decisions that could be made on the internet. The first has already been made regarding the freezing of the hacker's funds. But it doesn't end there...
Since CETUS recently announced that they are proposing a new protocol update subject to a community vote to recover the $162 million frozen in the hacker's wallet and return it to its rightful owners, SUI validators and stakers will vote on this decision.
Whatever the decision, it will mark a before and after for the SUI network.
Were you affected by this incident?
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