Sui Network, a notable player in the digital currency space, recently experienced a significant network outage due to a bug in the upgrade code. The outage occurred on the morning of November 21, 2024, between 1:15 and 3:45 am PT, causing a pause in all transaction processing as validators found themselves caught in a crash loop.
Sui Network released a comprehensive analysis report of the outage, detailing the circumstances and actions taken to rectify the issue. The report revealed that the bug had been identified and effectively fixed within a span of 2.5 hours. Sui broadcast this information via X, a popular social media platform, stating, “The rapid, collaborative response from Sui’s validator operators is an incredible testament to the strength of the Sui community.”
The network outage report elaborated that a bug in the recently upgraded congestion control code was the culprit behind the downtime. It stated, “An assert! in congestion control code erroneously caused validators to crash if the estimated execution cost was zero”. The congestion control system had recently undergone an upgrade to enhance shared object utilization, which involved more accurate estimation of transaction complexity. However, the new mode code, termed ‘TotalGasBudgetWithCap’, contained a bug that triggered the issue.
According to the report, the bug was identified and rectified through PR #20365. This fix was subsequently deployed to Mainnet in version 1.37.4 and to Testnet in version 1.38.1. In an impressive display of efficiency, the Sui network was back online within 15 minutes of the fix’s release, thanks to the swift and cooperative response from its validators.
The report also highlighted lessons learned from this outage. Notably, the last network downtime caused a dip of 5% in SUI’s market price. As a result, Sui has committed to strengthening its testing systems to simulate a wider range of adversarial transactions, in a bid to forestall similar issues in the future. Moreover, Sui plans to enhance its build workflows to expedite the debug and release binaries process. This move is in response to the significant chunk of downtime attributed to delays in the release build process.
Despite the outage, SUI is currently trading at $3.64, recording a 1.35% increase in the past day. The digital currency’s market cap also remains robust, standing at $10.37 billion, following a 24-hour market volume surge of 13.89% to $1.85 billion. This demonstrates the resilience and potential of Sui in the ever-evolving digital currency market.
