The Sui blockchain suffered its third network outage in less than two days, disrupting user transactions and leading to $1.88 million in liquidations, primarily affecting leveraged long positions. During this period of instability, the SUI token dropped sharply below the $1.00 support threshold it had maintained throughout much of the year.

This third outage struck during a critical epoch transition, halting user transaction processing despite validators remaining active in generating system transactions. The downtime extended across several hours, with the Sui development team tracing the root cause to a latent bug related to how a failure state persisted across validator restarts, which blocked the network’s progress to the next epoch. Prompt deployment of a software patch resolved the issue and restored normal operation.

The initial problems began when a bug in the gas fee charging logic, introduced in the latest software update, caused the mainnet to freeze for nearly six hours. After the rollout of a partial fix and the restart of validators, the network resumed but soon faced a second stall. This renewed disruption exposed that the initial patch addressed only part of the underlying fault. The third outage followed shortly afterward, compounding the effects of the ongoing technical challenges.

Throughout the outages, no user funds were reported lost, but the disruptions caused significant market turbulence. The SUI token’s price fell to approximately $0.90 on Binance, marking an overall decline of about 8% since the outages began and roughly 16% over the past week. Liquidations data indicate that leveraged traders holding long positions bore the brunt of the financial impact, accounting for $1.72 million of the total $1.88 million wiped out during this period.

The Sui team has communicated actively through social channels, providing updates while investigating the persistent bug affecting epoch transitions. The network required a majority stakeholder upgrade to the patched binary before full recovery. Validators worked closely to deploy fixes targeting the random initialization process that failed during epoch changes, a critical step in maintaining blockchain consensus and transaction processing.

Despite the interruptions, validators remained operational, processing internal system transactions while user activities paused. The temporary halts prevented checkpoint recordings, impacting network finality until the network stabilized following the fixes. These outages highlight challenges inherent in maintaining high-throughput, next-generation blockchain systems during major software upgrades.

The sequence of outages unfolded as follows:

  • The first outage began with a crash caused by faulty gas charging code, halting the network for nearly six hours.
  • The second stall emerged hours after the network resumed, revealing the initial patch was incomplete.
  • The third outage occurred during an epoch transition, caused by a bug in how validators handled failure states on restart.

The Sui network’s resilience was tested across this challenging period, but the development team’s swift response and coordinated validator upgrades allowed the platform to recover without loss of assets. Market participants, however, faced heightened volatility and forced liquidations, underscoring the risks involved in betting on short-term recoveries during infrastructure instability.