Key Takeaways
- • Sui Network achieved a peak throughput of 6,086,766 transactions per second (TPS) on July 4, 2026, during a public livestream experiment—the highest verified throughput ever recorded on any blockchain to date.
- • The peak performance exceeded the experiment's 1 million TPS target by over six-fold and represented approximately 20 times higher throughput than Sui's previous benchmark of 297,000 TPS established in controlled testing.
- • The record was achieved using "programmable tunnels," an offchain payment and state channel architecture that batches transactions and settles them to Sui mainnet upon closure, enabling gasless transactions at scale without requiring users to hold SUI tokens.
- • Participants accessed the experiment via zkLogin (Gmail authentication) and engaged AI agents and other users in games, payments, and chat functions across the network during the livestream event.
- • Sui ranks 13th by total value locked among DeFi platforms and maintains a market position as the 28th most valuable cryptocurrency as of 2026.
Summary
On July 4, 2026, Sui Network demonstrated record-breaking transaction throughput during a publicly accessible livestream experiment. At approximately 12:30 p.m. ET, the blockchain peaked at 6,086,766 transactions per second—establishing the highest verified throughput ever recorded on a blockchain. This performance exceeded the experiment's stated 1 million TPS target by more than six times and marked a significant advancement over Sui's prior maximum benchmark of 297,000 TPS achieved in controlled testing environments.
The throughput achievement was enabled by "programmable tunnels," an architecture using offchain payment and state channels that aggregate transactions before settling final states to Sui's mainnet. This design pattern allowed the network to process activity gaslessly—without requiring participants to hold or spend SUI tokens—while maintaining cryptographic verifiability of all transactions. Participants accessed the experiment using zkLogin, a primitive that enabled Gmail-based authentication, and received test tokens (MTPS) to engage across various activities including competitive gaming such as blackjack and "Quantum Poker," shared canvas drawing, chat functionality, and transactions.
According to Kostas Chalkias, Chief Cryptographer and Co-Founder at Mysten Labs, the experiment demonstrated the viability of programmable tunnels for applications beyond payments. "This is agent-to-agent commerce, competitive gaming, and prediction markets running gaslessly at massive scale," Chalkias stated. The livestream structure allowed any participant to observe and interact with AI agents battling across multiple game and transaction scenarios, effectively stress-testing the network infrastructure under real-world conditions with distributed participation rather than isolated laboratory benchmarks.
The throughput achievement was enabled by "programmable tunnels," an architecture using offchain payment and state channels that aggregate transactions before settling final states to Sui's mainnet. This design pattern allowed the network to process activity gaslessly—without requiring participants to hold or spend SUI tokens—while maintaining cryptographic verifiability of all transactions. Participants accessed the experiment using zkLogin, a primitive that enabled Gmail-based authentication, and received test tokens (MTPS) to engage across various activities including competitive gaming such as blackjack and "Quantum Poker," shared canvas drawing, chat functionality, and transactions.
According to Kostas Chalkias, Chief Cryptographer and Co-Founder at Mysten Labs, the experiment demonstrated the viability of programmable tunnels for applications beyond payments. "This is agent-to-agent commerce, competitive gaming, and prediction markets running gaslessly at massive scale," Chalkias stated. The livestream structure allowed any participant to observe and interact with AI agents battling across multiple game and transaction scenarios, effectively stress-testing the network infrastructure under real-world conditions with distributed participation rather than isolated laboratory benchmarks.
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