$162M in Frozen Crypto Awaits Sui Community’s Decision on Cetus Recovery

May 22, 2025, Cetus, a decentralized exchange (DEX) on the Sui blockchain, was hit by a major breach and lost about $223 million in assets. According to a post-mortem report by Dedaub, the attack exploited a critical overflow vulnerability in Cetus’s automated market maker (AMM) logic. This allowed the attackers to manipulate liquidity calculations and drain significant assets from the platform’s liquidity pools.

Sui network validators moved fast and froze around $162 million of the stolen funds, stopping further losses and buying time for a recovery plan.

What’s Next: Community Vote on Recovery Plan

Cetus has proposed a plan to recover the frozen assets. The plan is a protocol-level upgrade that will require a community governance vote. If approved, this will allow the retrieval of the $162 million from the attacker’s wallets without their signature. The recovered funds will be secured in a multisignature wallet jointly controlled by Cetus, OtterSec and the Sui Foundation.

The vote started on May 27 and will run until June 3. To pass, it requires over 50% participation from total staked tokens and a majority approval. As of now, the vote is live and stakeholders are weighing in.

Sui Foundation Financial Support

The Sui Foundation is stepping in to help with the losses. They’ve provided a secured loan to Cetus to fully compensate users who were affected. This loan, along with Cetus’s own reserves, will cover assets that were bridged out of the Sui network before the attacker’s wallets were frozen. However, this support is conditional on the community approving the recovery proposal.

In addition to the loan, the Sui Foundation has committed $10 million to the ecosystem’s security, funding audits, bug bounties and formal verification tools to prevent future exploits.