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Cetus Protocol, the biggest decentralized exchange (DEX) on the Sui network, was hacked on Thursday, losing about $223 million worth of SUI tokens.
The hack targeted the SUI/USDC liquidity pool, wiping out nearly all liquidity on Cetus and bringing trading on the platform to a halt.
The incident also caused a flash depegging of USDC on the Sui chain, where it was reported to be exchanging hands for a fraction of a cent. Liquidity in some pairs fell sharply, with some pools dropping as low as $143,000.
Cetus(@CetusProtocol) on #SUI was hacked and lost more than $260M!
The hacker is converting the stolen funds into $USDC and cross-chaining to #Ethereum to exchange for $ETH, with ~60M $USDC already cross-chained.https://t.co/b0uGu8icXrhttps://t.co/0BpKSaygmr pic.twitter.com/txfxLoImOd
— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) May 22, 2025
The exploit caused all of the top 15 SUI-based tokens to plunge by over 75%.
Cetus Protocol Team Confirms Breach
The Cetus team confirmed the breach and suspended trading in a bid to contain damage. It is probing the scope of the attack and trying to bring the system back to a stable state.
“We have confirmed that an attacker has stolen approximately $223M from Cetus Protocol,” it said in a post on X. “We have took immediate action to lock our contract preventing further theft of funds.”
It added that $162 million of compromised funds have been successfully paused, and that it’s working with the Sui Foundation and other ecosystem members on next-step solutions, with the goal of recovering the remaining stolen funds.
The attacker used a sophisticated method of attack that involved spoof tokens such as BULLA, which were used to manipulate faulty price computations and reserve systems in the smart contracts of Cetus.
The attacker also manipulated liquidity to withdraw actual assets such as SUI and USDC, exploiting vulnerabilities in the automated market maker logic of the DEX.
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