SUI’s $220 Million Crypto Hack Fuels Centralization Backlash
The post SUI’s $220 Million Crypto Hack Fuels Centralization Backlash appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.
Trusted Editorial content, reviewed by leading industry experts and seasoned editors. Ad Disclosure Cetus Protocol’s announcement on X that “an attacker has stolen approximately $223M” from its liquidity crypto pools set off the loudest governance controversy in Sui’s short history. The team wrote that it had “took immediate action to lock our contract preventing further theft of funds,” adding a reassurance that “$162M of the compromised funds have been successfully paused. … We are working with the Sui Foundation and other ecosystem members right now on next-step solutions” and promising “a full incident report.” Crypto Community Erupts After SUI Exploit Those next-step solutions triggered a philosophical firefight. To keep the stolen assets marooned on-chain, a super-majority of validators agreed to ignore outgoing transactions from three hacker-controlled addresses. Cyber Capital founder Justin Bons argued that the very act of blacklisting demonstrates structural centralization: “SUI’s validators are colluding to CENSOR the hacker’s TXs right now! … Does that make SUI centralized? The short answer is YES; what matters more is why?” Citing only 114 validators and founder–heavy staking, he declared: “The ‘founders’ own the majority of supply & there are only 114 validators!” Amogh Gupta from the SUI Foundation countered that the move was a legitimate exercise of distributed governance. “Just because validators reach consensus about something, doesn’t mean they’re ‘colluding’. […] Validators on other chains can (and have) done the same. Your holy grail of decentralization, Ethereum, did something similar in 2023 when it blocked OFAC-sanctioned transactions,” he wrote, later adding, “The point is that this capability is not specific to Sui. The OFAC censorship was a grey area […] but a hack is clear as day bad, so there is no contention about it being good or bad.” Bons rejected the analogy. “You are misinformed about the 2023 OFAC regulations:…
Filed under: News - @ May 24, 2025 5:17 am