Sui experienced a second major network disruption on Friday, less than 24 hours after a Thursday outage interrupted block production. The layer-1 blockchain was offline for 5 hours and 55 minutes on Thursday after what the team described as a bug in gas charging logic introduced by the 1.72 software release. Friday's stall temporarily paused network activity again before normal block production resumed at about 3:30 UTC. Both disruptions were caused by the interaction between new address balance functionality and gas charging logic in the 1.72 release. The incidents highlight ongoing reliability challenges for the high-throughput smart contract network as it deploys protocol upgrades affecting core transaction execution.
Sui Network Experiences Second Outage Within 24 Hours
The last block before Friday's disruption was produced at about 11:51 UTC, according to block explorer data. Network activity resumed at about 3:30 UTC after the long-term software fix was implemented by a majority of validators.
"Sui mainnet is currently experiencing a network stall. Network activity may be paused at this time," the Sui team said on X. "The Sui Core team is actively investigating. Updates and incident review will be shared as soon as they are available."
The team said the interim fix deployed after Thursday's outage had a low probability of causing another disruption. That risk materialized on Friday, forcing validators to move to the longer-term software fix. At least two-thirds of the validator set had already upgraded to the Thursday fix before the second issue appeared.
1.72 Release Introduces Gas Charging Logic Bug
The disruption centered on the interaction between new address balance functionality and gas charging logic in the 1.72 release. Sui said Thursday's halt was caused by a crash bug in the gas charging logic, while Friday's incident was tied to the interim fix that had been deployed to restore network functionality.
"Both today's and yesterday's halts are due to the interaction of the 1.72 release, which introduced address balances and gas charging logic. Yesterday's implemented fix was an interim measure designed to restore functionality to the network," the Sui team said.
The 1.72.2 release introduced 2 major protocol additions: Address Balances and Gasless Stablecoin Transfers. Address Balances were designed to simplify transactions by moving away from Sui's UTXO-style model and adding a single canonical balance for each token type. Gasless Stablecoin Transfers were designed to let supported stablecoins move peer-to-peer without gas fees or a separate gas token.
January Outage Lasted Over 6 Hours Due to Consensus Bug
Friday's stall came after Sui's worst outage on record and followed another major disruption in January. In that earlier incident, the network went offline for more than 6 hours after a consensus bug prevented validators from reaching the required threshold to continue block production.
The January post-mortem said validators submitted conflicting transactions to the checkpoint mechanism, causing the network to halt. Sui said at the time that the issue was not caused by congestion, user funds were never at risk, and no certified transactions were rolled back.
SUI Token Trades Around $0.90 During Network Disruption
The SUI token traded around $0.90 during the disruption, down slightly on the day. The limited price reaction suggests traders did not treat the outage as a full confidence break.
When a layer-1 blockchain stops producing blocks, deposits, withdrawals, on-chain settlement, DeFi activity, and bridge operations can all be paused. That can create operational risk beyond the chain itself, especially for assets used across trading venues and wallets.
FAQ
What caused Sui's second network outage on Friday?
Friday's outage was tied to the interim fix deployed after Thursday's disruption. Both incidents were caused by the interaction between new address balance functionality and gas charging logic introduced in the 1.72 release.
How long did Sui's network disruptions last?
Thursday's outage lasted 5 hours and 55 minutes. Friday's stall began with the last block produced at about 11:51 UTC and network activity resumed at about 3:30 UTC after validators implemented the long-term software fix.
What did the 1.72.2 release introduce to Sui?
The 1.72.2 release introduced Address Balances and Gasless Stablecoin Transfers. Address Balances simplified transactions by adding a single canonical balance for each token type, while Gasless Stablecoin Transfers allowed supported stablecoins to move peer-to-peer without gas fees or a separate gas token.
