The Resilience and Growth Potential of the SUI Ecosystem: From Security Crisis to Long-Term Development

Recently, the Cetus protocol on the SUI network suffered a hacker attack, raising widespread concerns in the market about the security and ecological stability of SUI. This article will analyze this attack incident, explore the technical foundations and ecological development of SUI, and consider its long-term rise potential.

1. Review of the Cetus Attack Incident

On May 22, 2025, the leading AMM protocol Cetus on the SUI network suffered a hacker attack, resulting in a loss of over $200 million in assets. The attacker exploited an integer overflow vulnerability in the Cetus contract, causing a massive outflow of funds through precise manipulation.

The attack process can be roughly divided into three steps:

1. Use flash loans to acquire large amounts of capital to manipulate prices.
2. Add a very small amount of liquidity using contract vulnerabilities
3. Withdraw massive liquidity to profit

The main reason for this vulnerability is the inadequate boundary condition checks in the Cetus math library, which can be fixed by modifying just two lines of code. This reflects that even in a blockchain focused on security, boundary handling in complex interactions can still become an attack vector.

2. The consensus mechanism of SUI and its responses

SUI adopts the delegated proof of stake ( DPoS ) consensus mechanism, which has the following characteristics:

• Average number of validators: 106
• Average Epoch Cycle: 24 hours
• Equity Delegation: Ordinary users can delegate SUI to validators to participate in the network.
• Representative round block: A few validators take turns to block, increasing TPS.
• Dynamic election: re-election of the validator set in each cycle

During this attack, SUI quickly froze the attacker's address through validators, successfully locking up $160 million in funds. This response reflects SUI's quick reaction capability in a crisis, but also raises discussions about its level of "decentralization."

3. Technical Advantages of Move Language

The Move language, as the foundation of SUI, has the following security features:

1. Clear ownership of funds, naturally isolated permissions
2. Language-Level Reentrancy Attack Prevention
3. Automatic Memory Management and Resource Ownership Tracking
4. The structure originates from Rust, enhancing safety and readability.
5. Lower gas costs, higher execution efficiency

The Move language provides a solid technical foundation for SUI, but this incident also reminds us that boundary conditions in complex interactions still require special attention.

4. The Sustainable Development of the SUI Ecosystem

Despite facing challenges, the SUI ecosystem continues to maintain a vigorous growth momentum.

• TVL is approximately 1.6 billion USD, DEX daily trading volume is 300 million USD
• Developer activity ranks among the top
• The ecosystem covers multiple tracks including DEX, infrastructure, gaming, and DePIN.
• The scale of stablecoins has surpassed 1 billion USD.
• Ranked 8th in total TVL across all chains, 3rd among non-EVM chains

Representative projects include:

• Navi Protocol: One-stop DeFi protocol
• Bucket Protocol: Liquidity Platform
• Momentum: Decentralized Exchange
• Bluefin: perpetual contract trading platform
• Haedal Protocol: Native LSD Protocol
• Artinals: RWA Protocol
• Walrus Protocol: decentralized storage protocol

5. Conclusion

SUI has demonstrated strong adaptability and ecological resilience during this security incident. Although it faces challenges in the short term, its solid technical foundation and continuously thriving ecosystem still possess long-term rise potential. In the future, SUI is expected to further consolidate its industry position as a diversified application platform and open a new chapter for ecological development.