Sui Token Starts to Recover After $223 Million Exploit on Its Biggest Decentralized Exchange

Sui’s native token started to recover after its price tumbled earlier on Thursday due to a more than $200 million exploit of the layer-1 blockchain’s largest decentralized exchange, Cetus. 

SUI was recently trading at $3.89, CoinGecko data shows. The token, which fell from $4.18 to $3.82 after news of the Cetus exploit erupted on Crypto Twitter, was down 3.7% over the past 24 hours. 

Malicious actors have siphoned $223 million worth of digital assets from Cetus’ liquidity pools, Sui said Thursday in a social media post. The wallet connected to the attack was recently holding about $37 million in cryptocurrencies, SuiVision records show.  

“The Cetus team is exploring paths to recover those funds and return them to the community, Sui said in the statement, adding Cetus has paused smart contracts to prevent further theft. “An incident report from Cetus is forthcoming.”

The exploit comes as the decentralized finance sector has struggled to weather an increasing number of multi-million-dollar cyber attacks over the past few years. A Chainanalysis report shows that stolen funds in the DeFi sector totaled $2.2 billion in 2024, a 21% increase from the year prior. 

More broadly, centralized trading platforms for digital assets have also suffered due to critical cyberattacks on their infrastructures. In February, crypto exchange ByBit sustained a $1.4 billion hack, marking the largest crypto heist ever by funds lost. 

Although Sui’s flagship token has largely recovered since the Cetus attack, other digital assets linked to its ecosystem are still struggling to retrace their losses. 

Lofi (LOFI), Sudeng (HIPPO), and Squirtle (SQUIRT) were recently trading down 15%, 6%, and 91% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap data.

Edited by James Rubin