Cetus has offered a $6 million bounty to the hacker behind a $56 million ETH theft, aiming to recover the stolen funds amid a high-profile crypto hack.
Recovering a share of the stolen assets is a time-sensitive agreement that includes the prize.
A $6 million reward is being offered by Cetus Protocol, a decentralized exchange based on the Sui blockchain, to the hacker responsible for a $223 million vulnerability that disrupted the platform earlier this week.
The incentive, which is part of a time-sensitive agreement, aims to recover some of the stolen funds, specifically 20,920 ETH worth about $56.3 million that was bridged to Ethereum.
Cetus Contacts the Hacker
Cetus acknowledged that it had located the Ethereum wallet used in the attack and had contacted the hacker to engage in negotiations in a late-night post on X.
In a statement co-signed by data analytics company Inca Digital, the team stated, “In exchange, you can keep 2,324 ETH (~$6M) as a bounty, and we will consider the matter closed.”
The warning indicated that legal and intelligence activities will commence if the attacker attempts to off-ramp or mix the assets.
The hack, which happened on Thursday, took advantage of a flaw in the smart contracts for Cetus’ liquidity pool.
The attacker depleted millions of cryptocurrencies, some of which were promptly converted to ETH and exchanged for USDC. According to Cetus, the vulnerability has been fixed.
In response, Sui Network, the blockchain that underpins Cetus, worked with validators to freeze addresses linked to the pilfered money.
According to the Sui Foundation, “many validators found the addresses where the stolen money was found and are disregarding transactions on those addresses until further notice.”
The Sui team claims that as a containment measure, hacked tokens valued at over $162 million have been “paused.”
The incident aroused concerns in the crypto community about the extent of control the network exercised, even as Cetus praised the cooperative effort with DeFi protocols and Sui parties.
Does SUI become concentrated as a result? Justin Bons, the founder of Cyber Capital, criticized the validators’ power to filter transactions and commented, “The short answer is YES.”
He identified the concentration of the token supply and the number of validators on the network as the main issues.
According to CoinGecko, Cetus’ native token, CETUS, fell 50% in the aftermath and now trades at $0.1714.
Other protocol-related tokens, such as LOFI and HIPPO, experienced similar losses.
Hacks Cost Crypto $1.6 Billion in Q1
According to the blockchain security platform Immunefi, the cryptocurrency ecosystem suffered a staggering loss of $1,635,933,800 over 39 events in the first three months of 2025.
Only two hacks involving two centralized exchanges accounted for most of the losses. In January, Phemex lost $69.1 million, and in February, Bybit lost $1.46 billion.
Thus, Q1 losses were 4.7 times higher than in Q1 2024. Fraudsters and hackers took $348,251,217 at that time.
Notably, researchers believe that the notorious North Korean Lazarus Group carried out the two biggest attacks. 94% of the total losses, or $1.52 billion, were stolen.
