Service Restored on Sui Network Following Brief Six-Hour Disruption Due to Technical Glitch

The Sui Network has resumed operations after experiencing a significant disruption on Thursday, which lasted for approximately six hours. This outage, the second to affect the layer-1 blockchain in 2026, was caused by a technical issue introduced by a recent software update, specifically version 1.72. In a statement released on X, Sui explained that the problem arose from a "crash bug in the gas charging logic," which prompted the network to come to a halt. The company has assured users that a comprehensive review of the incident will be made public shortly.

Prior to resolving the issue, Sui had notified users that the blockchain was experiencing technical difficulties, warning that transaction processing might be delayed until the problem was rectified. According to the network's status indicator, the outage lasted for 5 hours and 55 minutes. Although mainnet operations have resumed, validators are still reporting "degraded performance."

This incident marks the second time the Sui blockchain has gone offline in 2026, following a similar event in January that resulted in a downtime of over six hours. Additionally, in November 2024, the network suffered a crash loop that lasted approximately two and a half hours, preventing transactions from being processed.

As the 13th-largest blockchain in terms of total value locked, with approximately $542 million, Sui hosts 137 protocols, according to data from DefiLlama. The network's native token, $SUI, experienced a significant price drop of 6.6% during the outage, reaching a low of 90 cents, as reported by CoinGecko. However, the token has since partially recovered, trading at around 93 cents as of Friday.

The Sui token had previously seen a substantial price increase of 50% earlier this month, reaching $1.41, following several positive developments, including a significant investment by a Nasdaq-listed company and the announcement of upcoming features, such as zero-fee stablecoin transfers and private transactions. The mainnet was launched in May 2023, with the goal of providing a scalable and fast platform for financial institutions.

Adeniyi Abiodun, co-founder of Mysten Labs, the developer behind Sui, recently announced at Consensus 2026 that the network will soon introduce zero-fee stablecoin transfers and reiterated plans to add a private-transaction feature.

This year has seen several major disruptions in the crypto space, not all of which have been caused by technical issues. For example, Drift Protocol, a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange, was hacked in April, resulting in the temporary suspension of deposits and withdrawals. Similarly, Kelp, a liquid restaking protocol, was targeted by a cyberattack in April, prompting the platform to pause smart contracts for its restaking token while it investigated the incident.