Recently, the leading decentralized exchange in the Sui ecosystem, Cetus Protocol, encountered a significant security vulnerability. Hackers exploited a mathematical overflow flaw to steal approximately $223 million worth of crypto assets, prompting the industry to deeply reflect on the security of smart contracts and the boundaries of decentralized governance.
The core vulnerability of this attack stems from a logical flaw in the liquidity parameter design of Cetus's automated market maker. Such attacks are akin to 'using an 8-bit calculator to calculate 1 billion × 1 billion,' where high-order data loss leads to a misjudgment of the required token quantity.
After the incident, the Sui validator network intervened through the consensus layer to freeze $162 million of the stolen assets, but this action sparked controversy over decentralization. Validators directly ignored transactions from the hacker's address during the trading pool phase; technically, these transactions were entirely valid but could not be added to the blockchain due to the lack of validator packaging. Although the freezing action recovered user losses, the community is concerned that 'subjective freezing standards' may undermine the censorship-resistant value of public chains.
This incident reveals the 'emergency paradox' of public chains in extreme situations—if fully decentralized, it cannot respond quickly to user asset losses; if centralized intervention is introduced, it may undermine the core value of blockchain.