The Sui blockchain has successfully restored its operations following an outage that lasted nearly six hours, during which over $1 billion in transactions were halted. The disruption began in the afternoon, prompting the Sui Foundation to acknowledge the issue at 3:24 p.m. UTC. They reassured users that core developers were actively working to resolve the problem.
At 8:44 p.m. UTC, the network was declared back online, with transactions resuming normally. The foundation advised users to refresh their applications or browser windows if they continued to experience issues. A detailed incident review is expected to be shared in the coming days.
The outage, characterized as a “Consensus outage,” prevented the blockchain from confirming transactions. The foundation has yet to provide an explanation for the cause of this technical failure. This incident marks the second significant outage for the Sui network since its launch in May 2023. The first occurred in November 2024, highlighting ongoing challenges faced by high-speed blockchains.
Sui, a Layer 1 network developed by Mysten Labs, was created as an alternative to other high-throughput networks such as Aptos. Despite recent setbacks, Sui has shown considerable growth, surpassing $10 billion in 30-day decentralized exchange (DEX) volume around the time 21 Shares announced plans for a leveraged exchange-traded fund (ETF) linked to its native token.
In the broader context of blockchain technology, outages like those experienced by Sui are not uncommon. Other networks, including Solana, have faced similar challenges, although Solana has successfully avoided outages for the past 18 months due to timely emergency updates that enhance communication among validators.
Issues leading to blockchain outages can range from technical errors to potential 51% attacks. In this particular case, a synchronization failure among nodes resulted in the network becoming offline. Software bugs also pose a risk, as outdated code can disrupt operational processes. Just last week, Solana”s status account urged validators to upgrade to a new version featuring essential patches to avert downtime.
In light of ongoing internet infrastructure challenges, Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, has proposed that decentralized applications (DApps) could enhance stability in online systems. He cited significant outages, such as the major Cloudflare disruption, underscoring the importance of bolstering internet frameworks.
While the SUI token saw a brief uptick of 4% during the outage, it returned to approximately $1.84. This market response reflects the confidence investors and users have in the network, particularly given the swift resolution by the Sui team. As the foundation continues to investigate the root cause of the outage, users can now engage in normal activities on the Sui blockchain.
