Sui, the layer-1 blockchain behind the SOL rival token of the same name’s ecosystem, just processed 40,614,180 transactions per second in a live public stress test in Singapore on Wednesday — a number its founders say proves blockchains are being built for artificial intelligence agents, not for humans clicking buttons.
By Jennifer Kim | October 7, 2026
The test, conducted at the Sui Basecamp event in Singapore and first reported by Cointelegraph, pushed the network’s new “programmable offchain tunnels” to a peak of 40.6 million transactions per second — roughly seven times the 6.1 million TPS recorded in a similar demonstration in July. For altcoin investors, the result matters because it positions Sui as a serious infrastructure candidate for the machine-to-machine economy that many analysts expect to dominate the next cycle. SOL, the token of rival chain Solana, traded around 116 USD on Wednesday, down about 4 percent on the day, according to the batch price snapshot — showing the market has not yet priced in engineering wins like this one.
The Hook: A Speed Record Built for Machines
To understand why 40 million transactions per second is staggering, consider the scale. Traditional payment card networks process a few thousand transactions per second at peak. Even the busiest blockchain networks measure their throughput in the thousands. Sui’s new record is not the base chain itself running at that speed — it is a system of programmable offchain tunnels, which are private channels where huge volumes of activity happen off the main blockchain and then settle back onto Sui when the channel closes. Think of it as a tab at a bar: thousands of small purchases get recorded on the tab, and only the final total hits the register.
According to Cointelegraph’s report, more than 10,000 tunnels were opened on Sui mainnet during the live test, with activity spanning payments, games and chat applications. The transactions were verified as part of a demonstration designed to simulate high-frequency activity between AI agents — autonomous software programs that transact with each other without human involvement.
On-Chain Evidence: What Actually Happened on Mainnet
This was not a lab simulation on a test network. The tunnels were opened on Sui mainnet, the live production blockchain where real value moves. The milestone was announced by Sui Network and covered by Cointelegraph, with the project linking to its own blog post titled “Sui Sets Record for Highest Verified Throughput Settled to a Blockchain.”
- 40,614,180 TPS — the peak throughput reached during the live Wednesday test
- 6.1 million TPS — the previous Sui record from a similar July test
- 10,000+ tunnels — programmable channels opened on Sui mainnet during the demonstration
- CertiK — the security firm served as independent auditor during the demonstration and is reviewing the test data, with a report expected in the coming days
The Core Conflict: Offchain Speed vs. Onchain Trust
Here is the catch every investor should understand. The 40 million TPS figure describes activity inside the offchain tunnels, not the Sui blockchain itself processing every transaction directly. Critics of similar systems on other chains argue that offchain processing reintroduces a trusted intermediary — the exact thing blockchains were invented to remove. Sui’s answer is that tunnels are programmable and cryptographically settle to the main chain when closed, so the final state is still anchored onchain and inherits the chain’s security.
Adeniyi Abiodun, co-founder and chief product officer at Mysten Labs, the original contributor to Sui, was blunt about who this technology is for. “Sui is built for the moment when millions of AI agents are transacting every day,” he said, adding: “No market in the world needs 6 million transactions per second, let alone 40 million: people just don’t move that fast. Agents do.”
Market Implications: The AI-Agent Economy Needs Rails
The bull case for Sui and similar high-throughput altcoins rests on a simple premise: if software agents start paying each other for services — data, compute, content, logistics — they will need payment rails that humans never could. A human makes a handful of financial decisions a day. An AI agent could make thousands per minute. Legacy banking cannot serve that volume; blockchains tuned for it might.
The risk side is equally simple. Stress tests are marketing events as much as engineering milestones, and the number will not mean anything until real, sustained AI-agent traffic generates actual fees for the network. Investors should also note that an audited verification of Wednesday’s numbers by CertiK is still pending, with the report expected in the coming days. Until independent confirmation lands, the 40.6 million figure should be treated as a claimed demonstration result rather than settled fact.
The Verdict: What This Means for Your Altcoin Bag
For regular investors, the takeaway is not “buy Sui because of a TPS record.” Records fade quickly in crypto. The takeaway is that the competitive battleground among altcoin layer-1s is shifting from human retail payments — a story Solana has largely claimed — to machine-to-machine settlement, and Sui is making a credible early claim to that niche. If the AI-agent thesis plays out over the coming years, chains that can prove verified throughput at scale will capture fee volume that does not exist today.
Watch two things: the CertiK audit report expected within days, and whether any major AI or payments company actually builds on the tunnels. Engineering wins only become investment wins when someone pays to use them.
The cryptocurrency market remains highly volatile. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.
40,614,180 tps in a live public test, not some lab whitepaper number. that is the part people are sleeping on
^ exactly. anyone who sat through the 2021 congestion era knows the difference between a real live test and a slide deck claim
Programmable transaction blocks doing the heavy lifting here. Meanwhile SOL sits at 116 down 4 percent on the day, market clearly not pricing any of this engineering in yet
Fair point on SOL, though stress test conditions never fully match real mainnet spam. Still, 40M at Basecamp in front of a live audience is legit engineering
40.6M TPS but its offchain tunnels doing the work not the base chain. same trick Visa pulls with batching. the real question is what happens when 10000 channels try to settle at once during a market crash
the visa batching comparison is exactly right. 40M tps headline with an asterisk, base layer settlement is the footnote nobody reads
the simultaneous settle question is the one nobody wants to answer. 40M tps becomes 4M real fast if a cascade forces everyone onchain at once
the cascade math is the question nobody at basecamp asked. tunnels are great until every channel tries to close in the same block
the tunnels settle back through mist and nobody at basecamp asked what mist does when every channel closes at once. the cascade point stands
petter sul and the cascade question, this is exactly what killed raiden in practice. channels are magic until settlement and suddenly everyone is a lawyer
the bar tab analogy is doing heavy lifting here. if the channel operator goes down before settling the tab the money is stuck. payment channels have a decade long history of exactly this failure mode
that settlement question is the whole test they skipped. 40M tps means nothing if a crash forces everyone to settle in the same block
visa batches too but visa settles nightly without cascade risk. tunnels only beat that if simultaneous close is solved, and basecamp skipped that demo
friendly agents paying each other in a controlled demo is one thing. wait until the agents are adversarial and spamming the tunnels, thats the real stress test
every stress test uses friendly agents because hostile ones break the demo. give me one adversarial run before calling 40M production ready
7x improvement over the 6.1M demo in July is legit engineering progress. but SOL at 116 while this news drops says everything. infrastructure wins stopped moving token prices two cycles ago
True that infra stopped moving prices, but SOL at 116 while this drops is the market sleeping on the same trade twice. people said identical things about sol when it was just infra too
people did say identical things about sol in 2020 while it 100x’d off infra demos. painful pattern to fade twice
machine to machine payments is the first throughput narrative that actually needs these numbers. humans clicking buttons never needed 40M TPS. agents negotiating API fees in real time might
price not caring is honestly the healthiest signal. engineering compounding while the token ignores it is where the big alt runs started
live audience demo beats a whitepaper sure, but run the same test with adversarial spam instead of friendly agents and get back to me. basecamp is not a threat actor
friendly agents paying each other is a demo. run the same tunnels against a hostile botnet and then we talk
40.6M tps and sol bleeds 4 percent the same day. infra bulls been eating cold dinners for years but this one compounds quietly
july was 6.1M tps, october is 40.6M. whatever you think of the tunnels, the compounding rate on that curve is the part im not fading
6.1 to 40.6 in three months is a 6.7x, yeah. but tps demos compound slower than narratives do. id want two more data points before calling it a curve
6.1 to 40.6 in three months is a scary curve until you remember the july run had the same slide deck energy. show me adversarial numbers compounding, then im a buyer