Sui’s Haedal Protocol Halts haeVault After Cetus Bleeds $223M in Exploit

Another day, another DeFi bloodbath—this time courtesy of a $223 million exploit on Cetus that’s forced Sui-based Haedal Protocol to pull the plug on its haeVault feature. Just when you thought cross-chain bridges couldn’t get riskier.

The move comes as Haedal scrambles to contain fallout from Cetus’ security breach, which saw attackers bypass protocols like it was a weekend penetration test gone wrong. No ’slow rug’ here—just good old-fashioned code exploitation.

While the team promises a post-mortem, crypto veterans are already rolling their eyes at the inevitable ’we’ll do better next time’ press release. Meanwhile, that $223 million? Probably funding someone’s private island by now.

At press time, the CETUS token has plummeted by nearly 30% in the past 24 hours, according to data from CoinGecko. It is currently trading hands at $0.169. Meanwhile, the HAEDAL token has been holding up better, only dipping slightly by 0.7%in the past trading day. It is currently trading at $0.17.

The Sui token itself has gone down more than 4.7%, slipping from a $4.18 daily high to $3.85. It still sits nearly 28% below its latest all-time high at $5.35, which occurred in early January 2025.

Most recently, Cetus Protocol declared that it is offering a $6 million bounty in an attempt to get the attacker to hand over stolen funds. The hacker is being asked to return 20,920 ETH ($55.7 million) and all frozen assets on Sui. In exchange, they get to keep around 2,324 ethereum and immunity from legal action.

However, the Cetus team said the offer is time-sensitive and if the hacker off-ramps or puts the stolen funds through mixers, then the deal will be called off.