- A major security breach hit Sui’s largest on-chain exchange, Cetus, potentially putting up to $1 billion in digital assets at risk.
- Estimates put the stolen amount between $223 million and $260 million, causing a sharp decline in asset prices and prompting blockchain-level intervention.
- Some assets saw a value drop of more than 99% at the height of the attack, and the price of SUI fell by 8%, losing over $1 billion in market cap within hours.
- Sui validators rapidly froze stolen funds by deploying a special code that suspended routine transaction approvals.
- Critics highlighted how quickly the network coordinated to freeze assets, questioning the decentralization of a $13 billion blockchain.
On May 22, a cyberattack targeted Cetus, the leading decentralized exchange on Sui, resulting in the theft and threat of hundreds of millions of dollars in digital assets. The incident caused significant short-term losses and triggered immediate technical and community responses to contain further damage.
An early statement from the Sui Network estimated the alleged loss at $223 million, with some researchers later saying that up to $260 million was stolen from liquidity pools. During the attack, the prices of several affected assets fell more than 99%.
Market data showed that SUI, Sui’s native token, dropped 8% within three hours, decreasing its market capitalization by over $1 billion. Sui-based stablecoins and other tokens also experienced sharp declines. Some liquidity pools lost almost all their assets in what investigators described as a spoofing attack that targeted oracles—services that report prices and time data to the blockchain.
Following the attack, Cetus worked with the Sui Foundation, other decentralized protocols, and Sui’s validators to locate and secure stolen funds. Validators implemented a software update allowing an unsigned transaction to bypass standard rules and freeze the Hacker’s assets on the blockchain. Because enough validators agreed to the change within hours of the attack, "special transactions" could skip customary consensus checks—effectively locking the stolen funds remotely.
Third-party firms provided further help tracking the Hackers. Binance reported finding an Ethereum wallet linked to the attacker, while data from Arkham showed the hacker converting stolen SUI and USDC to Ether (ETH), likely to avoid censorship on the Sui Blockchain.
Just days before the attack, prominent investor Raoul Pal promoted SUI to his 1.2 million followers, stating he had invested 70% of his savings in the token. While some SUI supporters celebrated the rebound after the crash, others pointed to the ease with which insiders could freeze assets. Skeptics raised questions about the blockchain’s claims to being decentralized when a global group of validators could halt transactions almost instantly.
For some, these rapid actions cast a spotlight on the balance between community self-defense and fundamental decentralization in large blockchain projects.
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