Sui Community Approves $162M Repayment to Cetus Exploit Victims: What It Means for DeFi Security

<p>Sui validators approved a governance proposal to return $162 million in frozen assets linked to a recent exploit of the decentralized exchange Cetus, marking a key step toward full user repayment.</p><p>Cetus was exploited for over $220 million worth of digital assets on May 22, but validators managed to freeze $162 million of the funds shortly after the incident.</p><p>In a governance vote concluded on May 29, Sui validators passed the recovery proposal with 90.9% voting in favor, 1.5% abstaining and 7.2% not participating, according to the network’s official governance page.</p><p>“With this result, the impacted funds will be moved to a multisig wallet and held in trust until they can be returned to users according to the plan led by Cetus,” Sui said in a May 29 X post.</p><figure><img src="https://ipowercrypto.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/019720d8-ffe3-7b5b-8abc-c4f664e603dc.png" alt="Sui community passes vote for frozen Cetus funds. Source: Sui"></figure><h2>Cetus aims for restarts, full recovery within a week</h2><p>Cetus expressed gratitude for the rapid community support, sharing its recovery roadmap after the vote concluded.</p><p>First, Sui validators will implement the upgrade to transfer the frozen funds to the Cetus multisignature wallet, then Cetus can initiate the upgrade for its emergency recovery pool and full data restoration.</p><p>“Cetus is aiming to complete its full recovery and restart in approximately one week,” the protocol wrote in a May 29 X post, adding:</p><blockquote data-ct-non-breakable="undefined">“A dedicated compensation contract is under development and will undergo auditor review before deployment.”</blockquote><p>After the full protocol restart, all liquidity providers in the affected pools will regain access to their recovered liquidity, while remaining losses will be “claimable through the compensation contract,” it added.</p><iframe width="100%" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NDv0RfehETQ?start=" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen loading="lazy"></iframe>