Sui Network Recovers After Nearly Six-Hour Blockchain Outage

The issue halted mainnet activity and temporarily disrupted transaction processing before developers deployed a fix. The outage was Sui’s second major downtime event in 2026 and caused the SUI token to fall about 6% before partially recovering.

Sui Blockchain Back Online

The Sui blockchain resumed operations after suffering a network outage that lasted almost six hours. This was the second big disruption to the layer-1 network in 2026. 

According to the Sui team, the incident was caused by a bug that was introduced in the network’s 1.72 software release. The issue affected the gas charging logic and resulted in a crash that temporarily halted activity across the mainnet.

The network first alerted users that it was experiencing a “network stall,” and warned that transactions could be delayed or paused while developers worked on a fix. After approximately 5 hours and 55 minutes of downtime, Sui announced that activity resumed and confirmed that a full post-mortem review would be published in the coming days. Although the network was brought back online, validators were still reported to be operating with degraded performance shortly after the recovery.

Earlier in January 2026, Sui experienced another disruption that kept the network offline for more than six hours. The project also faced an incident in November of 2024, when validators became trapped in a crash loop that prevented transaction processing for roughly two and a half hours.

The outage had an immediate impact on market sentiment surrounding the network’s native token, SUI. During the disruption, the token’s Where to Buy fell by approximately 6% to around $0.90 before recovering slightly to trade near $0.92 after the restoration of services. 

Despite the setback, Sui is still one of the larger blockchain ecosystems in the industry. Data from DeFiLlama shows that the network ranks among the top blockchain platforms by total value locked, securing approximately $542 million across 137 protocols. The blockchain is also still attracting attention from developers and investors due to its focus on scalability and high transaction throughput.

Just weeks before the outage, SUI surged by roughly 50% after a series of positive developments. These included a Nasdaq-listed company announcing plans to stake a large portion of the token supply and developers unveiling upcoming features like zero-fee stablecoin transfers and privacy-focused transaction capabilities.

SUI Price action over the past month (Source: CoinCodex)

Since launching its mainnet in May of 2023, Sui has turned itself into a high-performance blockchain that is designed to support large-scale financial applications and institutional adoption. However, recurring outages may raise some serious questions about the network’s reliability.