Cetus poses community vote to possibly return 100% of funds to users affected by $223 million exploit

Cetus, a decentralized exchange and liquidity infrastructure provider on Sui, said that individuals affected by the $223 million exploit on May 22 could recover 100% of their funds through a community vote. 

"Using our cash and token treasuries, we are now in a position to fully cover the stolen assets currently off-chain if the locked funds are recovered through the upcoming community vote," Cetus wrote on X Tuesday. "This includes a critical loan from the Sui Foundation, making a 100% recovery for all affected users possible." 

"Because full recovery is dependent upon the results of the community vote, we humbly ask for the Sui community’s full support to recover the funds via the upcoming vote," the protocol continued. "We recognize that this is an extraordinary ask forced by our actions, however we think it is the right decision especially for those affected."

Regardless of the vote’s outcome, Cetus said recovery efforts would begin immediately, adding it is “committed to making things right.”

On May 22, Cetus experienced a $223 million exploit , causing some Sui-based tokens to plummet by as much as 90%, with the protocol's own token, CETUS, falling 50% at the time.

Cetus later identified a  flaw in its Concentrated Liquidity Market Maker (CLMM) pool smart contract, which was derived from the open-source library code used to create the contract. The attacker exploited a vulnerability in the overflow check error to manipulate the pool's liquidity and siphon funds before the core CLMM pools were disabled, The Block previously reported. Cetus has since patched the smart contract vulnerability. 

Cetus's exploit follows other large-scale DeFi protocol hacks, such as the $200 million exploit of the decentralized wallet service platform  Mixin Network  in September 2023, the $323 million hack of the cross-chain bridge  Wormhole  in February 2022, and the $600 million exploit of play-to-earn Ethereum sidechain  Ronin in March 2022. 

In total, hackers have stolen  $5.3 billion in funds from DeFi protocols, according to The Block's Data Dashboard.