Sui Achieves Record-Breaking 40.6 Million TPS in Live Stress Test
Singapore – In a recent live stress test conducted at Basecamp in Singapore, the programmable off-chain channels, or “tunnels,” of the Sui blockchain achieved a peak throughput of 40.61 million transactions per second (TPS). This figure represents a staggering 6.6-fold increase compared to the network’s previous record of approximately 6.1 million TPS recorded in July. The results are currently undergoing independent audit by CertiK.
Developer-Led Performance Breakthrough
The details of this performance surge were announced by Mysten Labs, the developer behind Sui, via its official blog. The test was executed on the Sui mainnet using actual hardware, with over 10,000 off-chain channels simultaneously active across various application scenarios, including payments, gaming, and chat.
Sui’s “tunnels” are designed as programmable off-chain channels where transactions are processed internally. Only the final settlement of these transactions is then recorded on the Sui blockchain once the channel is closed. This architecture allows Sui to process a high volume of transactions without consuming mainnet resources for every individual transaction, while still maintaining on-chain finality.
Future-Proofing for AI Agents
Adeniyi Abiodun, co-founder of Sui and Chief Product Officer at Mysten Labs, commented on the implications of the test results. “No market in the world needs 6 million transactions per second, let alone 40 million. Human actions are not that fast. AI agents can,” he stated. In an announcement on the official Sui Network X account, Abiodun emphasized that Sui’s tunnel design is intended to support the future of “tens of millions of AI agents transacting simultaneously every day.”
Independent Verification Underway
The cryptocurrency data analysis firm CertiK served as the independent auditor for this test. The firm is currently reviewing the test data, with a formal report expected to be released soon. While the 40.61 million TPS figure awaits third-party validation, the fact that the test was conducted on the live mainnet, rather than a simulated environment, lends significant credibility to the findings.
Significant Improvements in Three Months
The latest test results show a dramatic improvement from a similar stress test conducted in July, which recorded approximately 6.1 million TPS. The fact that the same off-chain channel architecture achieved a peak of 40.61 million TPS on the same mainnet environment within just three months indicates substantial advancements by the Sui team in areas such as channel management, settlement logic, and network latency optimization.
A Leap Beyond Traditional Blockchains
For context, the Ethereum mainnet currently handles around 15-30 TPS, while Bitcoin processes approximately 8-12 TPS. Sui’s 40.61 million TPS is more than 130 times that of Ethereum. It is crucial to note, however, that this figure was measured within the off-chain channels, with final settlement still occurring on the Sui mainnet.
Infrastructure for the AI Economy
The focus of this test was not on typical human user transactions but on high-frequency interaction scenarios for AI agents. As the AI agent ecosystem expands, with platforms like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and xAI’s Grok, there is a growing need for low-latency, high-throughput transaction infrastructure to facilitate automated decision-making, cross-chain scheduling, and real-time data exchange.
Sui’s off-chain channel architecture is specifically engineered to meet these demands. Other Layer 1 blockchains are also pursuing similar scaling solutions. Zcash’s Tachyon project aims for 50,000 TPS, and StarkNet’s Quantum Leap upgrade has reportedly increased its TPS by 50 times. With its 40.61 million TPS real-world test result, Sui appears to be taking a leading position in the “AI agent transaction infrastructure” sector.
Future Outlook and Validation
Following the release of the CertiK report, a key point of scrutiny will be the “effective throughput” of the 40.61 million TPS. This will involve verifying whether the transactions within the channels contained actual data and logic, or if they were merely empty counts. If the report confirms the quality of these transactions, Sui’s positioning as a platform for AI will become even more compelling.
