- Cetus came under a major cyber attack on May 22. Cetus came under a major cyber attack on May 22.
- $162 million of the stolen funds remains frozen on the Sui network.
- Cetus has committed to fully compensating users affected by the $223 million exploit.
Cetus, a decentralized finance protocol operating on the Sui blockchain was hit by a massive attack that drained over $200 million worth of digital assets last week.
Of the total amount stolen, $61 million was bridged to Ethereum, while $162 million remains frozen on the Sui network.
The release of the frozen funds is pending a community vote involving both Sui token holders and validators.
Cetus has now announced plans to fully compensate users impacted by the attack, regardless of the vote’s outcome.
The compensation package includes a mix of internal reserves and an undisclosed loan secured from the Sui Foundation.
As part of its post-attack strategy, Cetus also offered a $6 million bounty to the attacker in exchange for the return of the Ethereum-bridged funds.
What happened to Cetus?
A crypto cyber attack or a cryptographic attack typically occurs when a hacker gets into a blockchain platform and attempts or steals, exposes, alters, disables and/or destroys data via an unauthorized access to a computer, network, or digital device.
If the attempt is successful, the attacker will most likely steal assets or compromise the security of a person or platform.
On May 22, 2025, Cetus via an X post announced that Cetus Protocol was drained of $223M by an attacker who created spoof tokens and added these to Cetus liquidity pools. Then they used flashswaps to manipulate how prices were calculated. Once they had the funds, they bridged $60 million to Ethereum and used $58.3 million to buy over 21,900 ETH.
Over the years, many blockchain platforms have come under cyberattacks. In fact, in 2024 alone, over 2.2 Billion was stolen from crypto platforms.
Given how promptly Cetus has acted in the aftermath, it seems very plausible that those affected by this hack are swiftly compensated.
