Sui liquidity provider Cetus offers a $6M bounty to recover stolen funds after suffering a massive $260M hack on its protocol.
Yesterday, Cetus Protocol, the largest decentralized exchange (DEC) and liquidity provider of the Sui Network experienced a significant $260 million crypto breach.
Cetus has recently announced a $6 million bounty for the perpetrator to retrieve the stolen ETH, which is estimated to be worth $56 million.
SUI’s Cetus Provides $6M Bounty Following $260M Hack
The Cetus Protocol has issued a time-sensitive settlement offer to the hacker in response to the $260 million crypto breach to reclaim the stolen funds.
The team composed the following statement in their most recent X post:
We have identified the Ethereum wallet address controlled by the hacker responsible for earlier today’s exploit, and reached out to negotiate the return of customer funds.
In detail, Cetus and Inca Digital sent a message to the hacker, proposing a $6 million white hat transaction.
According to the agreement, the hacker may retain 2,324 ETH (approximately $6 million) as a bounty if they return the 20,920 ETH (equivalent to roughly $56.3 million) and the blocked funds in the Sui wallets.
Should an agreement be reached, the platform will consider the matter resolved and will refrain from pursuing any additional legal or public action.
Nevertheless, legal action will be taken if the misappropriated assets are relocated or mixed.
Cetus Hack: Specifics
A fraudster, whose wallet address is “0xe28b50,” has exploited Sui’s Cetus DEX, as revealed by Lookonchain.
According to reports, the perpetrator possesses more than 12.9 million SUI, which are estimated to be worth approximately $54 million.
Additionally, Lookonchain discovered that the perpetrator was laundering the stolen funds by converting them to USDC.
Subsequently, they transferred USDC worth approximately $60 million to the Ethereum blockchain, where they are being exchanged for ETH.
Additionally, analyst Ted verified that the intruder had acquired ETH tokens valued at $60 million.
Following the incident, the Cetus team has paused its smart contracts and is actively investigating the exploit.
Preliminary findings indicate that the attacker employed fake tokens, such as BULLA, to manipulate price curves and reserve calculations, thereby adding minimal liquidity to distort internal LP states and deplete tangible assets like SUI and USDC.
The team verified that the contract has been suspended “for safety.”
The Cetus incident prompted the development team to take action immediately.
They pledged to conduct an investigation and implement the requisite measures. According to the team,
At 3:52 AM PT, we became aware of an incident concerning Cetus. The Cetus team has our active support in this ongoing investigation and will provide further updates as soon as they become available.
Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance, shared an X post in response to the crypto breach, expressing his unwavering support for the platform.
“We are making every effort to assist SUI,” he wrote on X. It is not favorable. I hope that everyone remains safe.
Price Of SUI Plummets
The SUI token experienced a 15% decline four hours following the crypto breach, despite an earlier rally that followed the launch of xBTC, a 1:1 wrapped Bitcoin token, by OKX.
Nevertheless, the favorable trend was only temporary, as the token experienced a decline and is currently trading at $3.83.
SUI’s price has experienced a significant increase of 33% over the past 30 days, despite a 4.38% decrease in the past 24 hours.
A significant outflow of $200 million in funds was initially reported, which caused widespread concern within the community.
Other Sui-based tokens on Cetus, such as LBTC and AXOL, endured severe downturns, losing nearly their entire value and SUI’s decline.
Over the past six hours, the crypto hack has caused a significant decrease of approximately 80% in the value of other assets, including LOFI, HIPPO, and SQUIRT.
