Cetus Protocol
Summary
Cetus Protocol is a concentrated liquidity market maker (CLMM) decentralized exchange deployed on the Sui and Aptos blockchains. On May 22, 2025, the protocol suffered one of the largest DeFi exploits in history when an attacker exploited an integer overflow vulnerability in its smart contract math library to drain approximately $223 million from liquidity pools. Roughly $162 million was frozen on-chain through emergency validator action by the Sui network, and following a governance vote the protocol relaunched in June 2025 with partial user compensation.
Connected Entities
1 entitiesTimeline(10 events)
2023-04-01
MoveBit completes security audit of Cetus Protocol's Aptos deployment; a similar overflow vulnerability is reportedly flagged but not later applied to the Sui deployment.
2023-05-01
Cetus Protocol raises seed round from OKX Ventures, KuCoin Ventures, NGC Ventures, Animoca Brands, IDG Capital, and others.
2024-02-01
Cetus Protocol raises strategic round with Sui Foundation investment; protocol establishes itself as leading DEX on Sui.
2025-04-01
Zellic completes a security audit of Cetus Protocol approximately one month before the exploit; the integer_mate library vulnerability goes undetected.
2025-05-22
Cetus Protocol exploited for approximately $223 million beginning at 10:30 UTC via integer overflow in checked_shlw function. Roughly $60 million bridged to Ethereum; $162 million frozen on Sui by validator emergency action.
2025-05-22
CETUS token falls over 40% from approximately $0.26 to $0.15. Sui ecosystem liquidity severely disrupted; related protocols Kriya, Momentum, and Bluefin identified as sharing the same library flaw and patched.
2025-05-22
Cetus Protocol pauses affected smart contracts. Sui validators coordinate to block attacker addresses on-chain.
2025-05-29
Sui governance vote concludes: 90.9% of validator stake approves transferring frozen $162 million to multisig wallet controlled by Cetus, Sui Foundation, and OtterSec.
2025-06-08
Cetus Protocol relaunches at 03:00 UTC with 85-99% liquidity pool recovery. Protocol backed by $162M recovered funds, $7M treasury, and $30M Sui Foundation loan.
2025-06-10
Compensation token distribution begins: 15% of CETUS total supply allocated to affected users, distributed linearly over 12 months.
Decision Log
- hash: 6HNHPsjKb9jku5ABjrM2TLB951tZPYf5qhA1VWW3h6Qs
This investigation is cryptographically anchored to the Solana blockchain and source URLs are archived via the Internet Archive.
model: claude-sonnet-4-6
generated: 5/30/2026, 6:25:04 PM
last updated: 5/30/2026, 6:25:06 PM
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