SUI drops 5% amid blockchain outage: ‘Solana killer’ tag in danger?

• SUI dropped by over 5% after an outage on the network.
• The network halted block production for more than two hours before resuming operations.

Sui [SUI], at press time, had plunged by 5% to trade at $3.49. This drop had a ripple effect on the derivatives market, with Coinglass showing that $2.17M long positions were wiped out after long buyers became forced sellers. 

The plunge came after reports that the SUI network had halted block production. In fact, according to SuiScan, the network had gone for more than two hours without producing blocks. 

While responding to the community through X, the SUI Network stated that the bug had been identified and a fix deployed to take the blockchain back online. 

The X post stated,

“The SUI network is currently experiencing an outage and not processing transactions. We’ve identified the issue and a fix will be deployed shortly.”  

At press time, the network’s status page had confirmed that block production had resumed, and the blockchain was operational. 

The outage drew responses from the crypto community on X, with some highlighting the similarities between SUI and Solana. 

One user stated.

“SUI blockchain is down. And they claimed to be a Solana Killer.” 

Is SUI the next Solana? 

SUI has often been touted as a “Solana killer.” Earlier this month, AMBCrypto reported that the blockchain’s decentralized exchange (DEX) volumes were outpacing Solana’s. 

The recent outage on the network also happened after a surge in daily active accounts. Per SuiVision, the daily active accounts have increased from 668,000 to 826,000 within five days.

The total active accounts on the network have also surpassed 28M.

Source: SuiVision

However, since the beginning of the month, the Solana blockchain, which has previously struggled with network outages, has outpaced SUI’s growth. 

On the decentralized finance (DeFi) front, Solana’s Total Value Locked (TVL) has increased by 44% month-to-date from $5.79 billion to $8.39 billion at press time per DeFiLlama. 

Additionally, decentralized application (dApp) activity on the network had surged by 81% in 30 days to $7 billion.

Total transactions were up 13% while unique active wallets also rose by 34% in 30 days, underscoring the rising network usage.

Source: DappRadar

Read Sui’s [SUI] Price Prediction 2024–2025

Despite the rising usage, Solana has operated smoothly for months with no outages. If this continues, it could take away one of SUI’s advantages over the network. 

Moreover, network outages tend to impact trader sentiment around a token, as seen in the recent drop in SUI price before the network went back online.