Sui reports 40 million transactions a second in offchain test, with audit still ahead

Sui’s live speed test had a target of 20 million transactions a second. It reported more than twice that: 40,614,180. But the distinction behind the headline matters. The activity ran inside Sui tunnels, which process transactions outside the blockchain and settle to its main network when closed—not as individual transactions processed directly on the blockchain.

According to Investing.com Commodities, the demonstration took place on the Summit Stage at Sui Basecamp, the network’s annual conference, held alongside Token2049 Singapore at Marina Bay Sands. Adeniyi Abiodun, chief product officer and co-founder of Mysten Labs, ran the test before an audience watching in person and online. Mysten Labs is the original contributor to Sui.

A speed record with a settlement distinction

The reported result surpassed the 20 million target and was more than six times the 6,086,766 transactions per second achieved in Sui’s earlier test on July 4, 2026. Both measurements came from activity inside tunnels. Transactions per second, or TPS, measures processing speed, but here the figure describes that tunnel activity rather than direct throughput on Sui’s main blockchain. That distinction is central to understanding what the demonstration measured.

Sui tunnels were introduced during the July livestream. They resemble the Lightning Network’s payment channels in one important respect: activity takes place offchain, with settlement on the underlying blockchain when a channel closes. According to the source account, every closed Sui tunnel carries signatures from both sides and can be checked independently onchain. The design aims to pair fast processing outside the blockchain with a verifiable final settlement.

According to the source account, Sui’s tunnels are programmable, allowing them to support activities beyond payments.

That flexibility was part of the demonstration. Participants and spectators were invited to use a dedicated explorer, a tool for viewing network activity. Users and AI agents opened more than 10,000 tunnels across chat, games and payments. Those interactions took place offchain without gas charges—the fees associated with blockchain activity. The source says developers can also use Sui’s underlying building blocks to create tunnels for other applications, rather than being limited to the categories shown onstage.

The next test is the evidence

The demonstration was designed to test speed and resilience under the heavy processing demands of AI agents and machine commerce, according to the account. Its focus was therefore not just payments, but a wider set of interactions that software-driven applications might generate. Audience members also took part in a contest to guess the final TPS figure, giving both the room and online viewers a role in the live event.

Independent scrutiny remains the next milestone. Although the supplied headline describes the throughput as verified, the article says security firm CertiK will examine the associated proofs, execution logs, journals and supporting evidence, then publish a report in the coming days. For now, the result is a reported live-test milestone for Sui tunnels. What to watch next is CertiK’s assessment of the data behind it.