Sui Hits 40.6M Transactions Per Second in Live AI Agent Stress Test

Published October 8, 2026, 09:45 UTC. Reporting via Cointelegraph and a Chainwire announcement republished by TipRanks, Yellow and Unchained.

Sui claims a new throughput record. During a live demonstration on Wednesday at Sui Basecamp in Singapore, the network's programmable offchain tunnels processed a peak of 40,614,180 transactions per second, according to the project's official announcement. The figure beats the July 4 record of about 6.1 million TPS and doubles the network's own 20 million target for the test.

The test ran on the Summit Stage at Sui's annual flagship conference, held this year alongside TOKEN2049 Singapore. Participants and spectators opened more than 10,000 tunnels on Sui mainnet itself, with simulated activity spanning payments, games and chat applications, all processed gaslessly and offchain. Sui said the exercise was designed to replicate the burst patterns of agent-to-agent commerce, the workload it expects to dominate future settlement demand.

The 40,614,180 number

The number counts transactions processed through Sui tunnels, programmable offchain channels that execute activity offchain and reconcile with the blockchain only when they close. Every closed tunnel is mutually cosigned and independently verifiable onchain, according to the announcement, combining high throughput with cryptographic proof that no transaction can be tampered with. Like Lightning Network's payment channels, they settle to the main chain when closed, but unlike Lightning's channels they are programmable, meaning they allow a wider range of activities than payments.

Because the count is offchain throughput rather than transactions settled directly on the Sui blockchain, it sits in a different category from onchain TPS figures reported by competing networks. Running the test live on mainnet during Basecamp was a deliberate choice, since every tunnel and its closing settlement sits in a public record third parties can inspect.

Built for agents, not people

Sui is framing the milestone around machine commerce. "Sui is built for the moment when millions of AI agents are transacting every day," said Adeniyi Abiodun, co-founder and chief product officer at Mysten Labs, the original contributor to Sui. He added that no market in the world needs 6 million transactions per second, let alone 40 million: people just do not move that fast, and agents do.

The tunnels are designed to handle high-frequency activity, including interactions between AI agents, without requiring every transaction to be processed directly onchain. That pitch lands in a crowded field: Solana, Aptos and a wave of high-throughput chains are all competing on capacity, and each defines throughput differently.

CertiK audit is still pending

CertiK served as an independent auditor during the demonstration and is reviewing the test data, with a report expected in the coming days, Cointelegraph reported. Until that report lands, the 40.6 million figure rests on the project's own counting of a test it designed and ran.

Markets treated the milestone as no immediate catalyst. SUI slipped about 5.5% over the past 24 hours following the announcement, with no post-test rebound visible at the time of writing.

This article is news reporting and is not investment advice.

Sources

• Cointelegraph, Sui Sets New Throughput Record in Offchain Stress Test (Oct. 7, 2026), primary source
• Chainwire via TipRanks, Sui Sets Record for Highest Verified Throughput Settled to a Blockchain: 40 Million Transactions Per Second (Oct. 7, 2026)
• Unchained, Sui Sets Record for Highest Verified Throughput Settled to a Blockchain (Oct. 7, 2026)
• Coinotag, Sui Tunnels Peak 40,614,180 TPS Live Stress Test (Oct. 7, 2026)