Second Consecutive Day of Network Stalls
The Sui layer-1 blockchain has suffered two major disruptions in as many days, with network stalls on both Thursday and Friday causing widespread downtime. On Friday, block production halted at approximately 11:51 UTC and did not resume until around 3:30 UTC—resulting in over three and a half hours of inactivity. This outage followed a nearly six-hour disruption the previous day, marking the second consecutive day of significant technical issues for the network.
Both incidents were traced back to the same underlying cause: a software bug introduced in Sui’s 1.72 release. The bug affected the protocol’s address balances and gas charging logic, leading to a crash that prevented new blocks from being produced. Thursday’s outage lasted five hours and fifty-five minutes before validators implemented an interim patch intended to restore service.
The last block before Friday's disruption was produced at 11:51 UTC, according to Suiscan.
Despite these efforts, the temporary fix carried what developers described as a “low probability” risk of further disruption—yet within 24 hours, the network stalled again.
Sui’s Token Falters Amid Repeated Glitches
The ongoing technical problems have taken a toll on Sui’s native token, SUI. Over the past week, SUI has dropped by 20%, recently trading at $0.89. This price is more than 83% below its January 2025 all-time high of $5.35, highlighting just how far sentiment has fallen since the blockchain’s launch in 2023 by Mysten Labs.
Even with these setbacks, SUI maintains a market capitalization of approximately $3.6 billion—a figure that contrasts sharply with its persistent reliability issues. On paper, this valuation reflects investor confidence, but repeated outages are testing patience across the ecosystem.
Traders have responded swiftly to each incident, pushing the token lower after every new report of downtime.
Patch Deployed, But Problems Persist
After Thursday’s outage, Sui developers rushed out an interim software patch to validators in hopes of preventing further disruptions. However, this solution proved insufficient when Friday’s stall occurred due to the same bug affecting gas charging logic—a core mechanism for transaction fees on blockchains. A long-term fix has now been rolled out and adopted by most validators, according to cointelegraph.com, but it remains uncertain whether this update will fully resolve underlying vulnerabilities in future releases.
It is notable that Sui previously experienced another major outage in January 2024, when a consensus bug took the network offline for over six hours. During that incident, validators submitted conflicting transactions to the checkpoint mechanism—a process meant to ensure agreement on transaction order—though user funds were reportedly never at risk and no certified transactions were reversed.
Reliability Under Scrutiny
Sui entered the market with strong backing: Mysten Labs raised $300 million in Series B funding in 2022 for a valuation near $2 billion ahead of mainnet launch. However, repeated multi-hour outages have raised questions about whether rapid growth has come at the expense of stability. The fact that two major stalls occurred within two days—and less than six months after a similar event—has put additional pressure on developers to deliver lasting solutions.
For now, user funds appear safe during these incidents and no certified transactions have been rolled back during any of the recent outages. Still, confidence in Sui’s ability to provide uninterrupted service is wavering as each new disruption unfolds.
The Key Lessons
- •The Sui blockchain experienced two major outages on Thursday and Friday, with downtimes of nearly 6 hours and over 3.5 hours, respectively.
- •Both outages were caused by a bug in the 1.72 software release affecting address balances and gas charging logic.
- •The SUI token dropped 20% over the week, recently trading at $0.89—over 83% below its January 2025 all-time high of $5.35.
What could move the market
If the long-term fix now implemented by a majority of Sui validators fails to prevent further network disruptions after the outages on Thursday and Friday, immediate renewed selling pressure on the SUI token—which is already down 20% on the week—could follow.