The DEX "Cetus" on Sui moves frozen attackers' virtual currency; over 90% supported in governance voting.

## Progress Towards Asset Return

On the 30th, the DEX (decentralized exchange) “Cetus” on Sui announced that a proposal to execute a special transaction to move the assets frozen by validators, regarding the cryptocurrency stolen by attackers, was approved in a governance vote.

The voting period was set for a maximum of 7 days and started on the 27th, but the results were confirmed early as the approval conditions were met. From now on, Cetus explained that the Sui protocol will be upgraded, and the stolen assets in the attacker’s address will first be moved to Cetus’s multi-signature address, and then returned to the original holders.

What is Multisig?

Refers to a mechanism or technology that requires multiple signatures with different private keys to execute a transaction.

Cetus made the first report regarding this attack on X on the 22nd. At that time, assets worth $220 million (approximately 32 billion yen at the time’s rate) were stolen, and it was explained that validators succeeded in freezing $160 million (approximately 23.3 billion yen at that time).

They continue to work on solving the problem and have also explained that they are negotiating with the hacker to return the assets. On the 27th, they also published a report regarding this issue.

On the 30th, it was reported that this proposal was approved in the governance vote mentioned above. At the time of writing this article, 90.9% are in favor.

Future plans

Since this proposal was approved in the governance vote, we will now upgrade the Sui protocol to enable special transactions and send the frozen assets to a multi-signature wallet managed by Cetus, the Sui Foundation, and the blockchain security company OtterSec.

Additionally, we plan to perform data recovery and develop compensation contracts to resume the functionality of all core products. We aim to have Cetus fully online in about a week.

There are voices praising the recent series of responses from Cetus and Sui as contributing to the protection of assets, while at the same time, concerns are being raised about validator intervention and the centralization of power, which is attracting significant attention.

It should be noted that the price of Cetus’ proprietary token “CETUS” was significantly affected by this issue. The price, which was $ 0.244 on the 22nd, temporarily fell to $ 0.121 on the 27th. At the time of writing, the price was $0.138, down more than 14% week-over-week and more than 31% month-over-month.