Sui (SUI) Network Crashes Three Times in Two Days: Inside the v1.72 Upgrade Disaster

Key Takeaways

• The Sui blockchain experienced three critical failures between Thursday and Friday, all stemming from issues in the v1.72 software update.
• Initial outages resulted from a gas fee calculation error related to a newly implemented “address balances” functionality.
• Sui Foundation acknowledged deploying a temporary patch despite knowing it could trigger additional network failures — which subsequently occurred.
• An unrelated malfunction in the blockchain’s randomness generation mechanism caused a third stoppage lasting approximately six hours.
• The SUI token has declined to approximately $0.87, representing a roughly 13% decrease from its $1.04 price point seven days prior.

The Sui blockchain encountered an unprecedented series of network failures last week, experiencing three complete shutdowns within a 48-hour window. This Layer 1 protocol, developed by Mysten Labs, remained non-operational for a cumulative period exceeding 18 hours throughout May 28 and May 29. Each incident traced back to complications arising from the v1.72 software deployment.

The initial network disruption commenced at approximately 10 a.m. Eastern Time on Thursday, persisting until roughly 4:30 p.m. that afternoon. Investigators identified the root cause as a defect in the protocol’s gas fee processing mechanism connected to a recently introduced “address balances” feature. When transactions failed due to insufficient account balances, the system attempted to deduct gas charges from those same depleted funds, creating negative balance entries that ultimately caused validator settlement operations to fail catastrophically.

By early Thursday afternoon, the Sui Foundation had implemented a corrective measure. However, according to their official incident analysis released Sunday, engineering teams were fully aware the emergency patch contained inherent risks that could potentially cause subsequent network instability. They made the calculated decision to proceed with deployment to expedite service restoration.

Conscious Risk Leads to Secondary Network Failure

That strategic choice directly precipitated the second outage. Early Friday morning, around 5 a.m. Eastern Time, the blockchain halted once more when the specific vulnerability engineers had previously identified actually materialized. The identical balance underflow crash occurred because a different error classification had obscured the specific condition the initial patch was engineered to prevent. A comprehensive solution was successfully implemented by approximately 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time.

A third distinct failure struck later that same Friday afternoon, originating from an entirely separate technical issue. As validators rebooted their systems to implement the Friday morning correction, an insufficient number achieved readiness for the distributed key generation protocol that powers the network’s random number generation system. This DKG process automatically disabled itself according to design specifications, but a separate bug prevented the failure state from being properly written to persistent storage. Validators continued cycling through restart procedures without awareness that DKG had already terminated, causing transactions dependent on randomness functionality to accumulate indefinitely while the current epoch remained frozen. The network stayed offline from approximately 4:30 p.m. until 10:20 p.m. Eastern Time.

According to the Sui Foundation, artificial intelligence agents with direct access to validator logging data significantly accelerated diagnostic procedures across all three separate incidents.

Token Value Declines Amid Consecutive Outages

SUI was valued at approximately $0.87 during publication, reflecting about a 13% decline from the $1.04 level recorded seven days earlier. The cryptocurrency’s total market capitalization currently stands at roughly $3.49 billion. The asset reached its historical peak of $5.35 on January 6, 2025, indicating current pricing represents approximately an 84% reduction from that maximum. Throughout the three network stoppages, approximately $1.88 million in SUI leveraged positions faced liquidation, with traders holding long positions absorbing the majority of financial losses.

Cryptocurrency market analyst Crypto Patel observed on X that SUI appears to be exhibiting a stealth accumulation formation with minimal retail participant engagement, implying institutional players may be establishing positions within the $0.60–$0.90 price corridor. The Relative Strength Index currently registers at 34.51, approaching technically oversold conditions. Open interest contracted by 4.17% to $705 million, while trading volume expanded 28% to reach $740 million.

These incidents represent a continuation of Sui’s operational challenges. The blockchain previously experienced a six-hour interruption in January 2026 and suffered a validator malfunction in November 2024. Foundation representatives indicated plans to enhance fault isolation mechanisms so that future software defects affect individual transaction processing rather than triggering complete network-wide halts.