Six-Hour Downtime Ends as Sui Network Recovers from Critical Bug
Operations on the Sui mainnet have been restored following a bug in a recent network upgrade that knocked the blockchain offline for a duration of 5 hours and 55 minutes.
Following an outage lasting almost six hours on Thursday, the Sui Network has returned to operational status, with the layer-1 blockchain attributing the disruption to a bug that was introduced through a recent update. This incident represents the second time in 2026 that the network has experienced downtime.
In a Thursday post on X, Sui confirmed that mainnet activity had been restored following "a halt due to a crash bug in the gas charging logic introduced by the 1.72 release. A full incident review will be shared in the coming days."
Prior to the resolution, Sui had communicated that the blockchain was "experiencing a network stall" and indicated that transactions might remain paused until developers could implement a solution.
Based on the network's status indicator, the disruption persisted for 5 hours and 55 minutes. At present, Sui mainnet validators continue to be flagged as experiencing "degraded performance."
This marks the second time the Sui blockchain has gone offline this year. A comparable incident took place in January when the network experienced downtime exceeding six hours. Previously, in November 2024, an additional outage occurred when all validators became trapped in a crash loop for approximately two and a half hours, which prevented the processing of transactions.
Based on data from analytics platform DefiLlama, Sui ranks as the 13th-largest blockchain measured by total value locked, which stands at $542 million, and the network supports 137 protocols.
SUI token experiences 6.6% decline before partial rebound
During the network outage, the Sui (SUI) token experienced a decline of approximately 6.6%, reaching a low of 90 cents, based on data provided by crypto aggregator CoinGecko. The token has since seen a modest recovery and was trading at approximately 93 cents in early Friday trading.
In the earlier part of this month, the token experienced a 50% surge to $1.41 following multiple positive developments. These included a Nasdaq-listed company staking a substantial portion of the supply, as well as developers announcing upcoming features such as zero-fee stablecoin transfers and private transactions.
The Sui mainnet went live in May 2023, with the goal of delivering scalability and the capability to process transactions with sufficient speed for financial institutions.
At Consensus 2026, Adeniyi Abiodun, a co-founder of Mysten Labs, the development team behind the Sui network, revealed that zero-fee stablecoin transfers would be deployed in the near future and confirmed plans to introduce a private-transaction feature.
Technical issues haven't been the sole source of major crypto disruptions this year. In April, Drift Protocol, a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange, fell victim to a hack, which led to the temporary suspension of deposits and withdrawals.
Also in April, Kelp, a liquid restaking protocol, was subjected to a cyberattack, which prompted the platform to pause smart contracts associated with its restaking token (rsETH) while conducting an investigation into the incident.