Such aid of Cetus: the funds soon recovered?

Thursday, May 22, Cetus, the main Dex of the SUP ecosystem, is the victim of a hack and loses $ 223 million. All the actors of the network have been collaborating for four days to recover the stolen funds. After freezing of the funds, Cetus launched a proposal to recover them and obtains the support of the SU Foundation.

Back on the Hack of Cetus

Since its inception, the funds managed by decentralized finance has aroused the lust of hackers. The SUP ecosystem is no exception to the rule and its main DEX, Cetus, has just undergone an important hack last week. The striker managed to drain the equivalent of $ 223 million using false tokens to manipulate the price curves.

The same day, the Cetus team wanted to minimize the problem by communicating only around an Oracle bug before being forced to publicly recognize the flight. Meanwhile, the hacker knows that it is only a matter of time before measures were taken to prevent him from using the stolen funds. He therefore decides to bridge the equivalent of $ 60 million for the Ethereum blockchain in order to exchange these funds with ETH, escaping the measures that the Blockchain sui could take against him.

The Validators of the SUP network have frozen the rest of the funds (around 160 million dollars), in fact preventing the hacker from using them, which allows Cetus to think about a fundraising strategy.

The Foundation Suit to the aid of Cetus

As of Friday, the Foundation follows to negotiate with the hacker. This holds 160 million in USDC frozen on the SUP network and more than 20,000 ETH on the Ethereum blockchain. The Foundation proposed to the Hacker to act as a “white hat” instead of risking criminal proceedings. If he gives back the frozen funds and the ETH to show his good faith, he will be able to keep 2,324 ETH in reward, the equivalent of $ 6 million.

For the moment, the hacker has not accepted the proposal and several applications have suspended their activity while finalizing safety audits to be sure not to be vulnerable to the same attack.

Cetus has just decided to change your strategy using the governance of the SU. His proposal, posted online this weekend, aims to request an update from the network in order to directly recover the frozen funds, in fact the action of the hacker. This radical method is that of the Hard Fork d'Ethereum in 2017 after the hack of The Dao and had divided the community.

This proposal has just obtained significant help thanks to Support of the SUP Foundation. However, it issues two limits to its support: the latter is informal, the Foundation does not use its voting power so that the proposal has won, for the sake of neutrality. In addition, the Foundation requires that the funds recovered serve primarily to reimburse users of the application.

Controversy around the centralization of the Suis Network

We can be delighted that Cetus, the validators and the Following Foundation collaborate to recover the funds stolen by the Hacker and compensate the users. However, funds freeze has created a controversy, because in a sense, it contradicts the decentralization of the web3. Indeed, the frost was possible by the coordinated action of 114 Validators and Mysten Labs, the company which manages the network, by changing the source code in real time, without requesting the opinion of the community. Even if the reason can be commendable, this shows that the network and user funds are not resistant to censorship.

This intervention relaunches a regular debate within the DEFI: should we favor security to the detriment of decentralization?

Four days after the Hack of Dex Cetus, the Su sur Community must make a decision: should we update the network to recover the funds? The SUP Foundation provides support to help compensate users, while trying to keep a semblance of neutrality. But there is no doubt that this hack and its resolution will leave traces in this ecosystem.