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Sui's Cetus DEX Is Back Online After $223M Exploit
Liquidity pools have been restored to between 85% and 99% of their original levels.
Updated Jun 9, 2025, 1:09 p.m. Published Jun 9, 2025, 11:39 a.m.
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What to know:
- Cetus Protocol resumed operations after a 17-day outage caused by a $223 million exploit, recovering $162 million of stolen funds and pursuing legal action against the attacker.
- Sui compensated Cetus users with a loan to cover initial losses, and liquidity pools have been restored to 85-99% of original levels.
- Cetus’ total value locked rebounded to $124 million. It was $284 million before the exploit.
Sui-based decentralized exchange (DEX) Cetus Protocol is back online following a 17-day outage spurred by last month's $223 million exploit.
The protocol recovered around $162 million worth of stolen funds and is continuing legal action against the attacker, who did not respond to the DEX's requests to negotiate.
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Sui stepped in to compensate Cetus for the initial losses, issuing a loan to reimburse impacted users on May 28. DefiLlama data shows that Cetus' total value locked (TVL) was $284 million before the exploit and is now down to $124 million.
The attacker exploited a flaw in Cetus' shared math library contract, tricking the protocol into believing that one token was worth millions of dollars.
Despite attempts to negotiate and come to a settlement, the attacker began laundering funds through coin-mixing service Tornado Cash.
Cetus has refilled the liquidity pools with between 85% to 99% of their initial liquidity, meaning that users can now trade on the platform without exceptional slippage.
The Cetus token (CETUS) has lost 44% of its value over the past month and is down around 1% over the past 24 hours, CoinMarketCap shows.
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