Swell Pauses swETH and rswETH Deposits and Withdrawals

Swell has paused deposits and withdrawals for its swETH and rswETH tokens following reports of compromised repricing keys, saying it must restore the correct net asset value before reopening.

The suspension blocks holders’ direct route back to $ETH through the protocol. Both tokens’ access-control contracts show withdrawals and core methods paused. Swell’s published withdrawal code checks that pause before allowing either a new withdrawal request or a final $ETH claim, meaning the restriction reaches beyond new deposits.

The accounting correction was still pending in Swell’s announcement. Its app displayed exchange rates of about 1.203 $ETH per swETH and 1.1377 $ETH per rswETH, consistent with the rates returned by the token contracts. These are protocol accounting rates, not executable secondary-market quotes or proof of additional $ETH backing.

“The next step to resume normal operations is to return NAV to the correct value,” Swell wrote in its verified X account’s Oct. 23 update. It said it was working with security partners and Seal911 to secure its infrastructure, adding: “All funds are safe.”

Repricing Is Paused, Too

The incident concerns the mechanism that records how much $ETH each token represents. Swell’s documentation says the swETH exchange rate determines how many tokens depositors receive and how much $ETH is returned when they unstake. An inflated rate therefore distorts those conversions; it does not itself add assets to the pool.

As The Defiant previously reported, researchers flagged apparent abuse of Swell’s repricing permissions. Phylax Systems founder Odysseus described three swETH and two rswETH increases of roughly 1% each, involving inflated reserves labeled “transitioning.” He stressed that the reported 2,513 $ETH held was not a confirmed loss.

Both access-control contracts also show bot methods paused. The published swETH oracle code requires the BOT role to submit repricing snapshots and rejects submissions while that pause is active.

Pausing that path is distinct from revoking the key’s permissions. Swell’s latest statement did not announce a revocation, and the two access managers’ swETH and rswETH event histories show pause events but no role-revocation event since the incident began.

For holders, the displayed rate is also not necessarily the eventual withdrawal payout. Swell’s published swETH withdrawal contract uses the lower of the exchange rate when a request was created and the rate when it was processed to calculate the final $ETH claim.