Sui DEX Cetus Relaunches, Eyes Open-Source Move After $220M Exploit

<p>Cetus Protocol, a Sui-native decentralized exchange that suffered a huge $220 million exploit in May, says it is now working on going open-source following its recent relaunch.&nbsp;</p><p>An attacker exploited a pricing mechanism flaw to drain tokens from Cetus&rsquo; major liquidity pools on May 22. The protocol managed to freeze $162 million of the stolen funds shortly after.&nbsp;</p><p>Trade volume on Cetus had been trending upward before the attack, registering over $5 billion in April and another $5 billion in May, despite shutting down after May 22.&nbsp;</p><h2>Cetus liquidity pools replenished with loan and reserves&nbsp;</h2><p>In a June 7 Medium post, a day before its relaunch, the Cetus team said it&rsquo;s moving toward being fully open-sourced, with a new white bounty program, to &ldquo;encourage collective technical and security contributions.&rdquo;</p><p>As part of the relaunch, the team says it &ldquo;worked around the clock&rdquo; and patched the software vulnerability, which allowed the hack, restored pool data to the correct pricing and conducted security audits on all code fixes and contract upgrades.</p><figure><img src="https://ipowercrypto.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/01975282-ef00-7515-a90b-14638b56fb13.jpg" alt="Cetus&nbsp;Source: Cetus&nbsp;" title=""></figure><p>Affected liquidity pools were replenished using a combination of $7 million in cash reserves, a $30 million USDC (USDC) loan from the Sui Foundation and some of the recovered assets from the attacker.</p><p>However, not all affected pools were fully restored, with the current recovery rate between 85% and 99%, depending on how much pool was drained during the attack, according to the Cetus team.</p><h2>Cetus sets aside tokens for compensation plan&nbsp;</h2><p>As part of a compensation plan for affected users, 15% of the protocol&rsquo;s native token supply, CETUS, is being set aside, with 5% available immediately and 10% linearly unlocked every month over the next year, starting June 10.</p><p>The Cetus token is down over 12% in the last 24 hours, trading at $0.11, according to CoinGecko.</p><figure><img src="https://ipowercrypto.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/01975282-f346-70d7-bce6-80a86b921d6e.jpg" alt="The Cetus token has taken a hit since the protocol relaunch, dropping 12%. Source: CoinGecko" title=""></figure><p>There are also plans to upgrade the protocol monitoring system and have additional rounds of security audits.</p><h2>Protocol is still chasing funds&nbsp;</h2><p>Cetus said legal action is still on the cards, with legal proceedings launched in &ldquo;multiple jurisdictions&rdquo; and law enforcement agencies &ldquo;actively involved&rdquo; as well.</p><p></p><p>&ldquo;The attacker ignored our previous white hat offer and has begun attempting to launder assets &mdash; a futile and traceable act. We are highly confident that successful arrest and recovering the remaining assets is only a matter of time,&rdquo; the team said.</p><p>The day after the hack, Cetus offered a white hat bounty of up to $6 million to the exploiter if they returned the stolen 20,920 Ether (ETH), worth over $55 million, along with the $162 million in stolen funds frozen on the Sui blockchain.</p><p></p>