Sui DEX Cetus suspected of being hacked, over $220M drained from liquidity pools

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Digital Forensics: Swapping functionalities on Cetus have reportedly ceased working, and liquidity for many token pairs has collapsed.

Cetus Protocol, a key decentralized exchange and liquidity provider on the Sui network, suffered severe disruption in the early hours of Thursday after over $220 million was drained from its liquidity pools.

Initial reports from users and on-chain data indicate that approximately $11 million worth of SUI was withdrawn from the SUI/USDC liquidity pool on the Cetus Protocol.

Immediately after the incident surfaced, the price of SUI fell sharply by around 7%, dropping to $3.9, according to data from CoinGecko. As of press time, SUI was trading near $3.8.

Meanwhile, numerous liquidity pool tokens on Cetus experienced severe drawdowns, with some plunging by as much as 80% amid the widespread liquidity exodus.

Cetus Protocol’s CETUS token crashed around 33% after the exploit. At the time of writing, the crypto asset was changing hands at around $0.16.

According to Lookonchain, the hacker behind the exploit swapped stolen assets for USDC and bridged them to Ethereum. As of the latest update, the exploiter had spent around $58 million to acquire 21,938 ETH, averaging $2,658 per ETH.

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

Digital Forensics: Under investigation

In a statement issued shortly after the incident surfaced, the Cetus team said it had paused its smart contract as a precautionary measure following the detection of an anomaly in the protocol.

According to the team, an investigation is underway, and more details will come as soon as they become available.

🚨Alert Announcement 🚨

There was an incident detected on our protocol and our smart contract has been paused temporarily for safety. The team is investigating the incident at the moment. A further investigation statement will be made soon. We are grateful for your patience.

— Cetus🐳 (@CetusProtocol) May 22, 2025

Sui confirmed that it is working closely with the Cetus team to assess the scope of the disruption and will provide updates as available.

At 3:52 AM PT, we became aware of an incident concerning Cetus. The Cetus team has our active support in this ongoing investigation and will provide further updates as soon as they become available. https://t.co/LZwGeaCXvH

— Sui (@SuiNetwork) May 22, 2025

Following the incident, Sui-based DEXs Bluefin and Momentum announced temporary suspensions of activities, stating they would resume once the ecosystem stabilizes.

To protect our users, we’ve temporarily paused actions on Bluefin Spot as a precautionary measure. We want to emphasize that Bluefin remains fully secure.

Our team is actively monitoring the situation. Thank you for your trust.

— Bluefin (@bluefinapp) May 22, 2025

Due to the ongoing exploit on Cetus, we temporarily paused all activities on Momentum as a precautionary measure. All funds are 100% SAFE. We are in communication with the Sui foundation regarding next steps.

— Momentum (@MMTFinance) May 22, 2025

This is a developing story. We’ll give an update as we learn more.