Sui Suffers Second Outage in Two Days as Token Slides 20%

v1.72 Update Identified as Common Cause

Developers said both the May 28 and May 29 outages were linked to the interaction between Address Balances and gas charging logic introduced in the v1.72 release.

The v1.72 update was released on May 20, 2026, and included gasless stablecoin transactions, a new address balance feature and a fix to the gas meter.

According to developers, the fix deployed after the first outage was intended as an interim measure to restore network functionality while a longer-term solution was prepared. They said the interim fix carried a known low-probability issue that could trigger another halt, and a variant of that issue was encountered on May 29.

Developers said validators later implemented a permanent fix that fully addressed the known issues related to the original bug and allowed network activity to resume.

The May 28 outage lasted 5 hours and 55 minutes. Developers said it was caused by “a crash bug in the gas charging logic introduced by the 1.72 release.”

During that incident, Sui posted: “Sui Mainnet is currently experiencing a network stall. The Sui Core team is actively working on a solution.”

The outage temporarily stopped block production, halted network activity and paused transactions. Validators continued operating under “degraded performance” conditions shortly after the network recovered.

Sui said no user funds were lost or placed at risk during the incident.

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Token Declines as Network Activity Slows

SUI fell nearly 7% during the May 28 outage and dropped to around $0.90 before stabilizing.

The token was later reported around $0.89, down 2% over 24 hours and down 20% over seven days. 

The token remained more than 83% below its January 2025 all-time high of $5.35. Its market capitalization stood at roughly $3.6 billion.

SUI ranked among the five worst-performing top-100 crypto assets by market capitalization during the week.

The disruption extended beyond token performance. Decentralized exchange volume on Sui fell from $76.4 million to $48.4 million, while protocol revenue declined 39.8% to $22,502.

Thousands of users were affected as several protocols, including NAVI, Panzerdogs and Cetus, halted activity during the outage.

USDC activity on the network was also interrupted.

The stablecoin disruption occurred only days after Sui introduced gasless stablecoin transactions intended to support agentic payments and microtransaction-focused use cases.

Two days before the second outage, Sui founder Adeniyi Abiodun said the network was working to make all stablecoin transactions private by default.

Following the first outage, Abiodun wrote that “outages suck” and added: “Iterating fast comes with pain.”

Reliability Questions Resurface

The latest disruptions add to a series of technical incidents affecting the network.

A scheduling bug in November 2024 caused validators to enter a crash loop, halting transaction processing for roughly two and a half hours.

Another major outage occurred in January 2026 after a consensus divergence among validators. That incident was described as lasting more than six hours in one account and 5 hours and 52 minutes in another.

More than $1 billion in on-chain value was temporarily frozen during the January outage.

The specific cause of the consensus divergence was not disclosed. New automated validation tools were later introduced following the incident.

Community criticism intensified after the second outage.

OCT Gems wrote: “This is getting embarrassing.”

The account also noted that Sui had only recently recovered from the previous day's outage and added: “At some point, you have to stop calling these isolated incidents.”

The disruptions came weeks after CME Group launched SUI futures alongside AVAX, bringing additional attention to the network as institutional participation expanded.

Sui was launched in 2023 by Mysten Labs. The company raised a $300 million Series B round in 2022 at a valuation of about $2 billion.

Mysten Labs is the primary developer behind Sui and was formed by team members with roots in Meta’s canceled Diem project.

The network uses an object-centric data model and parallel transaction execution architecture. It also remains among the larger blockchain ecosystems by total value locked.

Earlier in May 2026, SUI rose 50% after a Nasdaq-listed company disclosed plans to stake a large amount of the token.

Mysten Labs also unveiled zero-fee stablecoin transfers and private transaction features at Consensus 2026.

An incident review is expected following the latest outage. A January 2026 post-mortem had promised better validator tooling, additional testing and clearer recovery procedures.