Sui's programmable tunnels have passed 40 million transactions per second (TPS) in a mainnet test at Sui Basecamp, with security firm CertiK checking the results. @SuiNetwork ran the test on
Sui's programmable tunnels have passed 40 million transactions per second (TPS) in a mainnet test at Sui Basecamp, with security firm CertiK checking the results. @SuiNetwork ran the test on October 7, peaking at 40.68M TPS and holding 40.33M over a full minute, per @CertiK.
Over about 11 minutes, 15.2 billion tunnel transactions went through, while 1,920 landed onchain. That gap between the two numbers is the core of how the system works.
Tunnels open and settle on Sui but run everything in between off-chain, much like Bitcoin's Lightning Network. Sui's own announcement says that, like Lightning's payment channels, tunnels settle to the Sui mainnet when closed, and that every closed tunnel is mutually cosigned and independently verifiable onchain. Unlike Lightning channels, Sui says its tunnels are programmable, so they can support a wider range of activity than payments.
Each tunnel needs two onchain transactions, one to open and one to close, according to Cryptonews. Activity in between stays within the channel, which is why the headline TPS figure is far larger than the number of transactions written to the base layer.
The demonstration was led by Adeniyi Abiodun, co-founder and chief product officer at Mysten Labs, on the Summit Stage at Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, alongside Token2049. Per the Sui Foundation, more than 10,000 tunnels were opened on mainnet, running chat, games and payments off-chain.
The earlier figure announced by Sui on the day was 40,614,180 TPS, against a 20 million target set for the event. It also compares with the 6,086,766 TPS Sui recorded on July 4, when tunnels first ran in a public livestream, according to The Crypto Times.
Readers should treat the figure with context. Crypto Briefing noted that the number reflects what the tunnel architecture can handle with onchain settlement behind it, not that every transaction was individually written to the base layer. The result is a stress test of Sui's channel design rather than a measure of normal onchain throughput.
Sui is positioning the test as groundwork for AI agent and machine payments, where high-frequency, low-cost interactions are expected to matter more than human-paced activity. Whether that translates into sustained network usage and demand for $SUI remains to be seen.
Sources:
Sui: record for highest verified throughput settled to a blockchainThe Crypto Times: Sui hits 40.6M TPS in Basecamp testCryptonews: Sui tunnels and how they settle onchain
