Cetus, a Sui-based liquidity provider, lost $223 million to hackers

On Thursday, May 22, Cetus confirmed that it was a victim of a hack which accounted for $223 million in losses. The confirmation came after the Sui-based (SUI)

A new report from Chain News has shed light on the recent hack on liquidity provider Cetus in the Sui ecosystem, confirming the total losses to be 223 million dollars.

The confirmation comes after Cetus, a protocol focusing on liquidity provision for the Sui chain, abruptly paused its smart contract on Thursday, May 18, in an attempt to mitigate further damage from the hack.

According to the report, the protocol managed to safeguard 162 million dollars out of the compromised assets by halting smart contract activity. The remaining funds are being transferred across multiple Sui wallets, many of which have already been blacklisted by a majority of the validators.

Cetus is collaborating closely with the Sui Foundation to contain the damage and recover as many funds as possible. To aid in the recovery effort, the validators are now ignoring transactions originating from wallets linked to the hack.

“Cetus worked together with the other DeFi protocols, the Sui Foundation, and the Sui validators to collectively protect the ecosystem. A large number of validators identified the addresses with the stolen funds and are ignoring transactions on those addresses until further notice,” stated the Sui Foundation in a statement.

The hack and subsequent actions by Cetus and the Sui Foundation have sparked debate within the crypto community on topics such as centralization and censorship.

Several crypto users on X, formerly Twitter, expressed their discomfort with the scenario, highlighting the potential implications of such actions.

“What’s worse? A hacker stealing funds, or validators freezing wallets. Maybe we're getting what we deserve for thinking PoS could work. It's time to return to Bchain and accept the small fees and fast transactions. We'll be needing them if we want to survive the coming DEFI winter,” wrote one user.

Following the incident, the Cetus Protocol token has fallen nearly 40 percent, dropping from a high of 0.25 dollars to 0.155 dollars. The Sui token has also declined by 4 percent, trading at 3.89 dollars.