Sui Network Faces Three Outages: What Happened?

The Sui blockchain recently faced significant challenges with three network outages occurring on May 28-29, 2026. This incident comes after the release of Sui v1.72, which introduced critical updates but also unforeseen technical glitches. The primary reasons for these disruptions were errors in transaction fee processing and randomness mechanisms essential for epoch transitions.

Understanding the Initial Outages

The first two incidents were attributed to a flaw in the hybrid gas payment system that emerged post-release of version 1.72. The update aimed to enhance user convenience by allowing transaction fees to be paid directly from address balances, not just through separate SUI tokens. However, this advancement led to complications when an error labeled “InsufficientFundsForWithdraw” caused transactions to cancel unexpectedly. Despite cancellation attempts, the system continued processing these transactions during a process known as gas smashing, causing validator shutdowns due to underflow issues.
To quickly address these challenges, developers applied a temporary fix; however, it failed to account for cases where other reasons masked the initial error. This oversight led to another outage on May 29. Subsequently, a comprehensive update was devised and implemented effectively resolving these problems.

The Third Incident: Epoch Change Complications

The third network halt occurred during an epoch transition—a critical period when validators initiate the Distributed Key Generation (DKG) protocol crucial for maintaining randomness in transactions. Due to repeated restarts and an overlooked bug that failed to record randomness shutdowns properly on disk storage, validators couldn’t achieve DKG’s participation threshold. This situation caused epoch changes to freeze while transaction queues continued growing unabated.

Moving Forward: Enhancements & Solutions

Reflecting on these events has spurred strategic improvements within the Sui team:

• Enhancing epoch transition resilience: Strategies will include optimizing protocols for smoother transitions between epochs.
• Simplifying transaction fee logic: A modular approach will be adopted for streamlined payment processes.
• Developing AI tools: These will aid in analyzing validator logs more efficiently.
• Implementing bypass mechanisms: Such tools would enable validators either skip or restart problematic transactions without halting overall operations entirely.

Previously made efforts like removing stablecoin transfer fees demonstrate their commitment towards improving user experience while addressing recent setbacks head-on showcases dedication towards achieving reliable service delivery standards across all aspects related directly or indirectly impacting stakeholders involved within this ecosystem landscape today!