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The decentralized change Cetus Protocol announced that hackers enjoy stolen $223 million in cryptocurrency and is providing a deal to terminate all correct action if the funds are returned.

The mission additionally announced a $5 million bounty to someone providing relevant knowledge ensuing in the identification and arrest of the attacker.

Cetus Protocol is a decentralized change (DEX) and liquidity protocol running on the Sui and Aptos blockchains.

It employs a Concentrated Liquidity Market Maker (CLMM) model, allowing liquidity services to allocate resources inner notify designate ranges, enhancing capital efficiency and enabling evolved trading systems.

Cetus Protocol boasts a entire trading volume of $57 billion (as of Could simply 2025), with over 15 million accounts executing 144 million trades on the platform.

The incident came about the day long previous by, before everything prompting Cetus Protocol to stay its tidy contract for investigations.

A couple of hours later, the mission confirmed the theft and that “$162M of the compromised funds have been successfully paused.”

In a later statement, Cetus Protocol announced that the hacker had exploited a susceptible equipment but no puny print had been disclosed.

“We diagnosed the foundation motive of the exploit and, mounted the related equipment, and suggested ecosystem builders as mercurial as we may per chance presumably per chance well with aid from ecosystem people to prevent other groups being affected,” acknowledged Cetus Protocol.

Moreover, the platform infamous that it has diagnosed the attacker’s Ethereum wallet address and accounts, and is working with third events to worth and freeze funds. Laws enforcement has additionally been suggested.

Cetus Protocol additionally provided the hacker “a time-sensitive whitehat settlement,” promising now to now not pursue correct action if the funds are returned. To position extra drive on the attacker, the mission announced a $5 million bounty for knowledge ensuing in the identification and the arrest of the hacker.

In the intervening time, a first-rate $162 million became as soon as paused on the Sui blockchain following an emergency vote by the validators.

Blockchain analytics firm Elliptic published a report per its visibility of the incident, pointing to a flaw in the automated market maker (AMM) logic, presumably though-provoking pool designate manipulation enabling flash mortgage-vogue assaults.

The blockchain intelligence company additionally presents an define of the attacker’s fund circulate attempts, at the side of swaps from USDT to USDC and rotten-chain circulate from Suit to Ethereum.

Elliptic is actively tracing the transactions from the preliminary exploit on Sui to the attacker’s wallets on Ethereum, and the hacker’s address is flagged on all most major exchanges and digital asset provider services, preventing laundering or transfer attempts.