On November 21, Sui, a decentralized layer-1 blockchain designed for rapid smart contract deployment, experienced a significant outage that halted block production for over an hour. According to data from the Sui Network explorer, SuiVision, the last block was produced at 9:15 am UTC, with no new blocks generated afterward.
The outage has drawn reactions from multiple industry observers, highlighting Sui’s ambitions to compete with Solana (SOL), the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. Crypto YouTuber Ajay Kashyap commented on X, “SUI blockchain is down. And they claimed to be a Solana Killer.”
Impact on SUI Cryptocurrency and Exchange Reactions
The downtime also affected Sui’s native cryptocurrency, SUI, which fell nearly 11% according to CoinGecko data. Despite this, SUI was trading at around $3.40, still up approximately 75% over the past 30 days. Major exchanges, including South Korean crypto exchange Upbit, temporarily halted SUI deposits and withdrawals due to network issues.
Sui Foundation’s Response and Resolution
The Sui Foundation announced the outage on X about two hours after the block production halt, stating that the network was experiencing an outage and not processing transactions. They assured users that the issue had been identified and a fix would be deployed shortly.
Cause of the Outage: DOS Bug
Cryptocurrency security firms suggested that the outage was likely due to a DOS bug in the system. Web3 security company ExVul reported that the Sui Network node experienced a DOS due to an integer overflow. ExVul also pointed to the alleged bug location on GitHub and suggested a fix patch code.
Network Restoration and Future Outlook
After a two-hour outage, the Sui Foundation announced that the network was back online and processing transactions again, thanks to the swift work of the Sui validators. The downtime was caused by a bug in the transaction scheduling logic that caused validators to crash, which has now been resolved. As the network resumed operations, the price of SUI recovered to around $3.60.
Historical Context and Future Implications
Tim Kravchunovsky, founder and CEO of Sui-based decentralized telecommunications network Chirp, noted that Sui had experienced similar outages before but only on testnet. He mentioned that while any blockchain aims to avoid such incidents, sometimes outages are unavoidable, much like internet connection issues.
