The premium offer to recover stolen funds from decentralized Cetus based in SU (DEX) closely resembles a successful strategy used by a Solana project three years ago.
It turns out that Cetus shares the same development team as Crema Finance, a DEFI project based in Solana which underwent a hack of $ 9 million in 2022 but recovered most of the funds by negotiating with its pirate. Now Cetus is based on the same strategy.
Cetus asks the pirate to make all except $ 6 million, or 2,324 ether (ETH), stolen funds in exchange for a promise not to pursue legal action. The protocol lost $ 223 million against a feat on May 22.
The size of the premium triggered a Users’ backlash, many calling for a formal compensation plan. Several members of the community argue that even if funds are recovered, most of the damage has already been caused – in particular to holders of the Cetus token, who fell in value after the incident.
Meanwhile, the Validators suis are also under fire for their role in the frost of the funds. This decision aims to help recovery, but criticisms say that it exposes the risks of centralization in the network.
Cetus of sui developers have a ghost exchange on Solana
A similar negotiation strategy used by the Cetus Sur Suit team was successfully used years ago to recover funds for Crema. The Solana project has not published on its X account since March 2023, and its trading platform now sees a negligible volume, but it has still not ended well for the pirate.
Crema underwent a hacking of around $ 9 million in 2022. Like the Cetus affair, the Crema pirate was offered an agreement to return the funds while keeping $ 1.6 million in exchange for not having reported the attack on the police.
The pirate was allegedly captured and sent to prison. In April 2024, the American prosecutor’s office for the South New York district sentenced Shakeb Ahmed to three years in prison for hacking two distinct cryptocurrency exchanges. One was identified as Nirvana finance, while the other was not appointed.
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The details of the case of the nameless scholarship corresponds to the Pirat of Crema, including the exact date of the feat and the terms of the agreement.
Norbert Bodziony, founder of Nightly App, says that Cetus’s team was behind Crema Finance.
Bodziony refused to disclose how he learned the relationship with Cointelegraph, but added that the connection is “commonly known” in the SUP developer circles.
Cointelegraph holded the hand to Cetus to confirm the link between the two projects, but the team had not responded by publication.
Cointelegraph learned separately that the two projects are founded by Henry du.
Save Cetus; Centralize Suis
The Validators of SU has collectively blocked the transactions of the pirate addresses, actually freeing $ 162 million from the funds stolen on suis. About $ 63 million had already been filled in Ethereum before the implementation of these checks.
Although the coordinated effort has been effective in preventing funding for funds, the cryptocurrency community criticized SUP to be too centralized.
“The Validators of Suits are collusion to censor the TX of the pirate right now! Does this make suit centralized? The short answer is yes; What’s the most thing is why? The “founders” have the majority of the offer and there are only 114 validators! ” Justin Bons, founder of Cyber Capital, wrote on X.
As good has pointed out, Suis has only 114 validators – much less than its more established intelligent contract peers. Ethereum has more than a million validators, while Solana has 1,157.
Meanwhile, the members of the Su sur Community defended this decision, arguing that this is how decentralized real world channels should work.
“Decentralization does not concern people while people are injured, it is a question of acting together, without the need for authorization,” said a member of the SU.
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After hacking, the SU developers committed the code for a proposed function which would have allowed specific transactions to bypass all signature and security checks by adding them to a white list.
Although the function could have been used to help recover stolen funds, it also raised concerns about centralized control and decentralization erosion. The code was not finally merged and is not live on the network.
Suis and Cetus Distes tarers comprises recent hacks
The feat of Cetus highlighted the persistent security challenges of Defi while raising deeper questions around who keeps the reins in supposedly decentralized networks like suis.
The supply of $ 6 million in the hacking team reflects the game book he used with Crema – but this time, the cryptographic community is not as indulgent. With Cetus Tanking, fractured confidence and validators freeze funds, criticism requires whether the decentralization of suis is more appearance than reality.
The debate on decentralization is not unique in Suis. When Bebit lost $ 1.4 billion in February hacking linked to the actors of the North Korean state, security experts and users urged platforms like Thorchain and Exch to block funds.
In this case, Thorchain has received a backlash so as not to intervene, which is exactly the opposite of what SU is criticized for the moment.
For the moment, the pirate has not accepted Cetus’s offer. Two Ethereum portfolios linked to exploiting it always hold more than $ 60 million in ETH, without movement at the time of the editorial staff. The addresses are paralyzed.
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