Cetus Relaunches Protocol After Recovering $162M From Exploit - Unchained

Sui- and Aptos-based decentralized exchange Cetus has relaunched its protocol 17 days after an integer overflow vulnerability in a shared math library used by Cetus’ contracts allowed an attacker to artificially inflate deposited tokens and drain funds from its liquidity pools.

Working with Sui validators, the protocol managed to freeze $162 million of the stolen assets on the Sui network. The Sui Foundation also extended a $30 million USDC loan to Cetus, and the protocol used its $7 million in reserves to help replenish affected liquidity pools.

Cetus announced the full relaunch on Sunday, saying that affected LP positions would see a recovery rate of between 85% and 99% depending on the extent of the attack on each pool. The team plans to use its native CETUS token to compensate users to 100% liquidity, with 15% of the token supply now deployed to the compensation contract — 5% will be claimable at launch, while 10% will be unlocked in a linear process lasting 12 months.

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Despite the substantial recovery, assets worth tens of millions of dollars remain under the attacker’s control, and some have already been laundered.

“This restart signifies more than just a relaunch, but a renewal,” the Cetus team said. “We’re rebuilding — more secure, more resilient, and more dedicated than ever to delivering secure, powerful and user-friendly DeFi infrastructure for the Sui ecosystem.”