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Cetus, a decentralized crypto exchange (DEX) built atop the Sui blockchain network, said $162 million of over $220 million stolen in a May 22 hack has been frozen.

According to the Cetus team, the DEX is working with the Sui Foundation and other entities within the ecosystem to recover the remainder of the funds. The Sui Foundation also confirmed:

“A large number of validators identified the addresses with the stolen funds and are ignoring transactions on those addresses until further notice. The Cetus team is exploring paths to recover those funds and return them to the community.”

The Cetus hack is the latest in a string of such incidents impacting crypto and Web3 in the first half of 2025. Cybersecurity continues to be a major issue in crypto, with many industry executives calling for the sector to police itself and establish more robust defenses or risk increased regulatory scrutiny.

Source: Cetus

Related: Germany seizes $38M in crypto from Bybit hack-linked eXch exchange

The Cetus hack: the story so far

On May 22, the Cetus DEX was hacked in what is believed to be a smart contract code exploit that saw the DEX drained of approximately $223 million in user funds.

According to the team behind the Extractor Web3 security notification tool, $63 million of the stolen funds were bridged to the Ethereum network.

The Extractor team also identified a wallet address ending in “AF16” used by the threat actors to launder 20,000 Ether (ETH), valued at roughly $53 million.

The Cetus hackers transfer 20,000 Ether to a new wallet address. Source: Etherscan

The recovery efforts and the asset freeze coordinated by different projects, platforms, and validators in the Sui ecosystem drew mixed reactions from the crypto community.

“Good news for the victims, but if validators, 114 only in total, can freeze wallets when they want, it raises a major question about the network’s censorship resistance. Sui is anything but decentralized,” one user wrote in response.

Magazine: $55M DeFi Saver phish, copy2pwn hijacks your clipboard: Crypto Sec

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Apex Group, a financial services provider with more than $3 trillion in assets under administration, said on Tuesday it had acquired a majority stake in Tokeny, a Luxembourg-based firm that helps institutions tokenize real-world assets (RWA) on public blockchains.

According to the deal, Apex expects to take full ownership of Tokeny over the next three years, after first investing in the company in late 2023, Apex said in a press release. The companies did not disclose the terms of the acquisition in the press release, and a spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment.

The acquisition comes as more traditional financial firms are looking at tokenization as the next frontier in capital markets, using blockchain technology for moving assets like bonds, funds and other securities.

For institutional investors, the process promises simpler cross-border transactions, faster settlement and new liquidity channels. Tokenized assets could be a $18 trillion market by 2033, a report from BCG and Ripple last month projected.

“Tokenization is a foundational shift in how assets will be managed, distributed, and accessed,” Apex founder and CEO Peter Hughes said in a statement. “Our strengthened partnership with Tokeny is key to delivering on our vision to be the infrastructure provider in the digital era of finance.”

Tokeny’s infrastructure has already been used to tokenize over $32 billion in assets, supporting the full life cycle of tokenized securities — from issuance to transfer to compliance — and is best known for establishing ERC-3643, a widely used standard for compliant digital asset transfers, the press release said.

Apex said Tokeny’s team and tools will be brought in-house, and it aims to offer clients a turnkey infrastructure for blockchain-based finance, layering smart contracts and decentralized protocols on top of its traditional services.

Read more: Ripple, BCG Project $18.9T Tokenized Asset Market by 2033

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