Sui’s Price at a Crossroads: Can It Recover After Cetus Protocol’s $223M Exploit?

Sui’s blockchain ecosystem reels as Cetus Protocol—a key liquidity layer—gets drained in a $223M exploit. The breach sends shockwaves through DeFi, leaving traders wondering: Is this a buying opportunity or the start of a deeper slump?

Market watchers brace for volatility. Sui’s price action now hinges on two factors: how fast Cetus patches its security gaps, and whether institutional players see the dip as ’discounted exposure’ or a red flag. Meanwhile, retail bagholders pray this isn’t another ’rugpull masquerading as an exploit’—because honestly, when was the last time a $200M+ hack didn’t smell fishy?

Technical charts show Sui hovering near critical support. A breakdown here could trigger stop-loss cascades, while a bounce might attract opportunistic algo traders. Either way, one truth remains: In crypto, the only thing faster than a protocol’s TVL is the speed at which ’security audits’ get discredited after the fact.

• Most of the impacted Sui-based tokens in the Cetus Protocol attack dropped over 30 percent in the last 24 hours.

• Sui price will likely rebound towards $5 in the near future after validators recovered the majority of the stolen funds.

Sui (SUI) price was rejected again at the resistance level around $4.18 amid the ongoing wider crypto bullish outlook. The large-cap altcoin, with a fully diluted valuation of about $39 billion and a 24 hour average traded volume of around $3.6 billion, dropped nearly 10 percent on Thursday to trade about $3.9 during the late North American trading session.

Sui price underperformed compared to the wider altcoin market, which followed the Bitcoin (BTC) price rally in the past 24 hours. 

Sui Ecosystem Bleeds on Cetus Protocol Hack

The sui ecosystem experienced one of its worst attacks since inception on Thursday, May 22. Cetus Protocol, a leading DEX and liquidity aggregator on the Sui network, reported that an attacker had stolen $223 million, through manipulating liquidity contracts.

The network validators acted quickly by pausing $162 million IPO n of the stolen funds to reimburse the Cetus Protocol users. Meanwhile, the attacker has already bridged the remaining funds to the ethereum (ETH) network, currently worth over $60 million.

Following the attack, several Sui-based tokens led by CETUS, LOFI, and Alpha Fi (ALPHA) dropped over 20 percent. The liquidity drain caused a widespread fear leading to more users migrating to other chains.

Dear SUI community, thank you for your patience while our team works on the incident investigation and resolution.

Since taking the actions indicated in our previous announcement, we have also done the following:

1. We engaged the broader ecosystem, Sui team, and related… https://t.co/Gs1EWXZ6AD

Short-term Targets for SUI Price

Sui price has been forming a macro bullish sentiment following the wider crypto market rebound experienced since April. In the four-hour time-frame, SUI price was rejected at the resistance level around $4.18, signaling potential short-term correction towards $3.6.

However, if sui price rebounds from the current level and breaches above $4.18, the next target is around $5.03. The bullish sentiment for SUI price has the upper ground as the daily MACD line continues to rise above the Zero line amid increasing histograms.