The blockchain suffered a roughly 6-hour network outage on Jan. 14. It halted block manufacturing and transactions throughout all validators.
In a autopsy printed on Jan. 16, the Sui Basis confirmed that the stall was brought on by an inner divergence in validator consensus processing. Validators had been unable to certify the checkpoints, and the transactions timed out. Nonetheless, SUI claims that the community’s security mechanisms functioned as supposed, stopping any lack of funds or inconsistencies in finalized states.
What Occurred
In line with the post-incident clarification, validators had been unable to agree on a single checkpoint digest after reaching completely different conclusions about consensus commits. In consequence, checkpoint certification stalled, halting transaction execution throughout the community. The problem was not brought on by congestion, elevated transaction quantity, or any exterior assault, Sui claims. RPC learn requests continued to serve the final licensed state all through the disruption, except nodes had been explicitly configured to cease serving knowledge after extended inactivity. Sui reassures that no licensed transactions had been rolled again, no double-spends occurred, and consumer funds remained totally safe.
How the Repair Works
Engineers recognized the purpose of divergence and deployed a repair that purged incorrect consensus knowledge earlier than safely replaying the affected portion of the consensus historical past. Validators operated by Mysten Labs first canaried the patch, confirming regular checkpoint manufacturing by logs and inner verification.
Following that validation, the broader validator set upgraded to the mounted binary, replayed consensus deterministically, and resumed checkpoint signing. As soon as a quorum signed the identical checkpoint digest, certification restarted, and the community returned to regular operation.
Sui Worth Impression and Group Response
Buying and selling on exchanges and DeFi protocols briefly slowed, however resumed as soon as the chain stabilized. The SUI token fell about 4% through the downtime, then rebounded to round $0.87 the following day.
On X, customers remained involved concerning the second main outage for the reason that launch in 2023. “This marks the second main outage since launch, with nonetheless no public root-cause clarification,” X consumer 0xc06 wrote.
Among the many L1 blockchains, Solana has suffered essentially the most outages. Sui and Aptos observe with 2 and 1 since launch, respectively.
What’s subsequent
The Sui workforce outlined a number of enhancements aimed toward decreasing restoration time in related edge instances:
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Earlier detection of checkpoint inconsistencies to pause consensus sooner.
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Extra automated operator tooling to determine and clear up divergent inner state.
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Expanded randomized and adversarial testing of consensus logic, together with up to date Antithesis configurations to persistently floor this class of bug.
Sui confirmed that each one security and consistency ensures had been maintained all through the incident and that the community is now totally operational.
Learn authentic story Sui Blockchain Explains Major Outage, Claims Funds Were Safe by Yana Khlebnikova at Coinspeaker.com
