Users point to BlueMove insider backdoor as liquidity pools on Sui get drained

The liquidity pools behind quite a number of tokens in the Sui ecosystem were emptied on Saturday, July 11. The liquidity pools are tied to BlueMove, a decentralized exchange on the Sui blockchain, and onchain observers are now accusing the DEX of pulling the funds through a planted backdoor.

One of the voices that has been active in calling out BlueMove and Sui is Tyler Simpson, founder of Quantum Void Labs, who posts as @quantumvoidlabs.

Simpson wrote that BlueMove “pulled all of the TVL in every single pool” and put the loss at more than 700,000 SUI, adding that “charts are destroyed pools drained entirely.”

In the late hours of July 11, Simpson had called out BlueMove for draining their “locked” liquidity pools.

The Quantum Void Labs founder later wrote, “All tokens on BlueMove DEX — aka, any token launched on MovePump Launchpad. All pools were drained to $0.”

What are other observers saying about the BlueMove liquidity pool drain?

Defimon Alerts, another onchain monitoring account on X, referenced an onchain message that mentioned a drained BlueMove pool of about 400,000 dollars. The message read like a negotiation aimed at whoever took the funds.

The sender wrote, “You drained the BlueMove DEX pool (~$400k). Keep 30% as a white hat bounty and return 70% within 48h to our Sui address: 0x85bf745a737a34bf73f360c22d5c8aea1f1767f3c458f5269a7c2f821b9d3781.”

The sender stated that they will consider treating the matter as resolved if the funds are returned, but they would pursue all available legal and recovery actions if the account fails to return the funds.

The tokens hit were those that launched and bonded through the MovePump curve, a bonding-curve launchpad used by smaller and older meme projects on Sui.

An X user with the account @saksidasaksi stated that BlueMove was removing the liquidity pools on its app and that the Beeg Blue Whale project held its primary liquidity in the MovePump contract, and it has seen its liquidity drop significantly.

In a follow-up, the same account stated BlueMove “stopped development a long time ago” and was now stripping out pools that projects had treated as locked.

Did BlueMove know about the backdoor that drained LPs?

Simpson wrote on X, “BlueMove team shipped the backdoor themselves.” He added that “they upgraded the package on May 31 (by the upgrade cap holder)” and also shared the transaction block address.

According to Simpson’s account, a version he labeled v12 added a function for returning added liquidity along with a double-mint mechanism that inflated LP tokens, and the package was made immutable immediately afterward.

Defimon Alerts also noted that a backdoor had been reported. However, the figures cited here come from the observers and range from about 400,000 to 550,000 dollars, alongside the separate 700,000 SUI estimate.

BlueMove has form for winding down without much runway. In August 2023, the project announced it would cease operations on Sei Network within 72 hours, citing trading volume below expectations and asking users to delist their NFTs first.

The BlueMove incident also adds fuel to the ongoing complaint about Sui itself. Two days before the drain, Simpson wrote that Mysten Labs and the Sui Foundation had “pushed away” most of the projects built on the chain, sparing only a handful such as WAL and DEEP.

He said in his Saturday thread that he had warned the network about BlueMove “three times.”

As of publication, BlueMove had not posted a public response to the accusations.

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