Sui Mainnet Resumes Operations After Series of Network Outages

The Sui mainnet has returned to normal operations following a series of three network outages that occurred between May 28 and May 29, 2026 [3]. The disruptions, which halted transaction processing and froze decentralized finance (DeFi) activity, were traced to bugs introduced in the network’s 1.72 software release [1, 3].

Key takeaways

• The Sui mainnet experienced three separate halts over two days, all linked to the 1.72 software update [3].
• No user funds were lost or compromised during the network disruptions [1, 3].
• The outages prevented users from adjusting DeFi positions, executing trades, or performing liquidations [1].
• The Sui Core team has committed to strengthening end-of-epoch resilience and refactoring gas charging logic to prevent future failures [3].

Technical Failures and Recovery Efforts

The initial outage began on May 28 when the 1.72 update introduced a flaw in the network's gas charging logic [1]. The system crashed when the network attempted to debit fees from transactions that had been cancelled, resulting in an impossible negative balance [3]. While validators implemented an interim fix, a second halt occurred on May 29 due to an edge case where an error code bypassed existing safeguards [3].

A third disruption followed later that day during an epoch change. A latent bug prevented the network from saving the status of a failed setup process to the disk, causing validators to stall while waiting for data that would never arrive [3]. To restore the network, validators holding more than two-thirds of all staked tokens were required to coordinate and upgrade to a patched version of the software [1]. Throughout these incidents, the Sui Core Team confirmed that the network’s safety guarantees remained intact and no previously confirmed transactions were reverted [3].

Impact on Market and Future Infrastructure

The SUI token experienced volatility during the disruptions, with prices declining between 4% and 8% as traders reacted to the uncertainty [1, 2, 4]. While the network has since resumed normal operations, the incidents have drawn attention to the reliability of the blockchain, which is designed to support high-throughput DeFi and institutional applications [1, 2].

This week’s events mark the second and third major outages for the network this year, following a six-hour stall in January caused by a consensus commit bug [1, 4]. To address these recurring technical challenges, the development team has outlined plans to improve failure containment, ensuring that a single bad input cannot force the entire network to halt [3]. Whether these measures will restore investor confidence remains to be seen as the project continues to compete with other layer 1 blockchains by offering high-speed transactions and low fees [2, 3].