According to on-chain monitoring, the Cetus attacker seems to have controlled all LP pools priced in SUI, with the stolen amount exceeding $260 million at the time of writing. Currently, the hacker has begun converting funds to USDC and cross-chaining to the Ethereum mainnet to exchange for ETH, with approximately $60 million in USDC already transferred.

The hacker's on-chain address is: 0xe28b50cef1d633ea43d3296a3f6b67ff0312a5f1a99f0af753c85b8b5de8ff06. The main assets in this address are currently SUI and USDT, but also include mainstream Sui ecosystem tokens such as CETUS, WAL, and DEEP, indicating the extremely wide scope of this hack.

The Cetus team has not yet provided a clear response, but a team member in the project's Discord group chat stated that the Cetus protocol was not stolen, but experienced an "oracle bug". The Sui official said they would actively support the Cetus team in conducting a continuous investigation and provide further updates as soon as possible.

Of course, on-chain data doesn't lie. According to statistics, the Cetus protocol's LP pools have lost over $260 million in this incident, with the stolen amount exceeding the protocol's TVL ($240 million) and market cap ($180 million). At the time of writing, the CETUS price has dropped from $0.25 in the afternoon to $0.17, with the project's future looking uncertain.

Community Opinion Points to Team's "Theft History"

Interestingly, as Cetus triggered a crash in the Sui ecosystem, many community members on Twitter pointed out that Cetus was developed by the same team as Crema Finance, a DeFi protocol in the Solana ecosystem, which had previously experienced a theft incident.

On July 3, 2022, Crema Finance was similarly attacked by hackers using a Solend flash loan, with LP funds drained, resulting in a loss of over $8 million. On July 7, the hacker returned stolen cryptocurrencies worth $7.6 million after negotiations with the team. According to the negotiation agreement, the hacker was allowed to keep 45,455 SOL ($1.65 million) as a bounty.

Currently, there is no public information confirming that Crema and Cetus were developed by the same team, but the reasons for their thefts appear to be consistent.

With Over 60% Market Share, Can the Sui Ecosystem Recover?

According to DeFiLlama data, Cetus was previously the top DEX in the Sui ecosystem, with trading volume accounting for over 60% of the entire ecosystem. This "liquidation-style" attack undoubtedly directly destroyed the ecosystem's liquidity center, which would be a devastating blow for any "second-tier public chain".

Since March last year, the Sui ecosystem's on-chain transaction volume has been generally trending upward, with ecosystem mainstream tokens like CETUS, DEEP, and WAL rising rapidly, widely viewed by the community as the most potentially profitable public chain in this cycle and the "next Solana".

Interestingly, according to Dune data, there has been a large amount of wash trading on the Sui chain, with ecosystem liquidity toxicity consistently close to 50%, which is part of the reason for community feedback that "there's nothing, it's just prices keep rising".

According to CoinGecko data, SUI and mainstream ecosystem tokens like DEEP and WAL have been affected and are declining, but seem to be showing signs of stabilization.

However, Sui's "strong foundation" persona has long been established in traders' minds. In the past month's altcoin recovery market, Sui has been the most eye-catching among mainstream public chains. Facing this major ecosystem theft, can the foundation provide an effective response and further reinforce its "strong foundation" persona?

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