Who is supporting the return of trust in Sui after the $223 million security incident?

Sui Ecological Restoration Observation: There are not only survivors, but also builders.

Written by: Ding Dong (@XiaMiPP)

On May 22, the decentralized trading platform Cetus of the Sui ecosystem was attacked by hackers, resulting in a loss of approximately $223 million. This incident had a significant impact on the entire ecosystem, triggering panic among users and directly leading to outflows of on-chain funds. According to on-chain data, the total value locked (TVL) in the Sui network dropped from a peak of about $2.1 billion to a low of $1.57 billion, a decline of over 25%, putting the entire ecosystem under severe strain.

After the incident, Cetus quickly took emergency measures. With the cooperation of most Sui validation nodes, the Cetus team successfully froze the two main wallet addresses used by the attacker to transfer funds. At the same time, Cetus quickly collaborated with the Sui security team and several security audit agencies to conduct a comprehensive audit of the smart contracts and developed a recovery plan for user assets. In addition, the Cetus team invested all their cash reserves of $7 million and obtained a loan of 30 million USDC from the Sui Foundation for user asset compensation.

On June 8, the Cetus protocol officially resumed operation, reopening all functions including trading and liquidity management. The liquidity recovery of affected liquidity pools reached 85% - 99%. Cetus also promised to allocate 15% of the total tokens in the protocol to compensate affected users, of which 5% is immediately available for withdrawal, and 10% will be unlocked linearly over the next year.

Although this incident has had a significant impact on the ecosystem, on-chain data shows that Sui’s TVL is gradually recovering. As of now, the TVL has rebounded to $1.92 billion, close to the levels prior to the incident. This rebound not only indicates that user confidence is returning but also reflects that some protocols are attracting new capital inflows, providing a stabilizing effect.

In this “post-disaster recovery” process, four protocols have performed outstandingly in terms of TVL and user growth, namely Momentum, Turbos, Bluefin, and Kai.

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Momentum: Growing ve( 3, 3) DEX

Momentum is the first decentralized trading platform on Sui with a native ve(3, 3) mechanism. Through the governance token veMO combined with voting incentives, users can earn a share of transaction fees and protocol incentives by locking their assets, encouraging long-term participation and governance of the protocol. This model originated from Curve and effectively motivates the interests of liquidity providers (LP), token holders, and protocol governance.

Since its launch in March this year, Momentum has grown rapidly in terms of TVL and transaction volume. To date, its TVL has exceeded $89 million, reaching an all-time high, making it one of the brightest protocols in the Sui ecosystem. Currently, Momentum’s total trading volume has exceeded $3.6 billion, and the cumulative number of users has exceeded 420,000. Recently, Momentum completed a new round of strategic funding led by OKX Ventures with participation from Coinbase Ventures, further enhancing its ecosystem expansion capabilities.

Turbos: A Safe Haven in Crisis

Turbos is a DEX that was deployed on the first day of the Sui mainnet launch. In terms of architecture design, Turbos emphasizes modular decoupling, where each functional module is relatively independent. This structure effectively reduces systemic risk from a technical standpoint. As a result, during the recent Cetus security incident, Turbos’ contracts did not involve any functions with vulnerabilities, and the entire platform was not affected.

After the incident, Turbos quickly initiated a self-examination and simultaneously invited several third-party security organizations, including Mysten, OtterSec, MoveBit, and CertiK, to conduct independent audits. The results showed that the vulnerability did not affect the normal operation of Turbos. More importantly, while other platforms paused services, Turbos maintained stable operations without any transaction interruptions, demonstrating the platform’s technological maturity and security resilience.

From the TVL data, it can be seen that since the stabilization after the Cetus event, the capital inflow speed of Turbos has significantly accelerated. Driven by the recovery of market confidence, several mainstream Memecoins have transferred most of their liquidity to Turbos, including LOFI, reflecting the market’s recognition of its technological stability and security.

In addition to security guarantees, Turbos has recently launched multiple liquidity incentive pools, including SUI-USDC and zero impermanent loss USDT-USDC, further attracting users to participate in liquidity provision and enhancing platform activity.

Bluefin: Focused on On-chain Derivatives Trading

Bluefin is a protocol focused on decentralized derivatives trading, providing users with financial products such as perpetual contracts. Its product structure relies on on-chain matching and clearing mechanisms, offering high transparency and operational stability. Bluefin’s matching engine optimizes trading efficiency while reducing slippage, making it suitable for medium to high-frequency traders and hedging strategy users.

Currently, the Bluefin platform maintains a relatively stable trading activity and continues to expand its user base and product portfolio, making it an important component of the derivatives market on Sui.

Kai Protocol: Automated Asset Management Platform

Kai is a protocol that offers strategy automation management, focusing on providing users with on-chain asset allocation and yield aggregation services. Users can deploy strategy pools to gain features such as automatic reinvestment and risk adjustment, reducing operational complexity.

Kai’s mechanism is suitable for users who wish to achieve stable returns with a lower level of participation. Its strategy combinations are continuously expanding to cover investment needs of different risk preferences. Currently, the platform has attracted a group of users who prefer stable investments, with TVL showing a steady growth trend.

Overall, although the Cetus incident has caused a temporary shock to the Sui ecosystem, it has also become a verification point for ecological resilience. The stable growth of Momentum, Turbos, Bluefin, and Kai not only provided a floor for TVL in the short term but also demonstrated their comprehensive strength in mechanism design, security strategies, and user attraction. As the ecosystem recovery progresses and user confidence gradually rebounds, Sui is slowly stepping out of the shadow of the black swan event and moving towards a new stage.