Sui posted a throughput figure that reads more like a population count than a blockchain statistic. During a live demonstration at the Basecamp conference in Singapore on October 7, 2026, the network processed 40,614,180 transactions per second, with independent auditor CertiK verifying the number in real time as it happened.

Organizers had set a target of 20 million TPS. Sui roughly doubled it.

How the Record Came Together

The test ran alongside Token2049, one of the larger gatherings on the crypto conference calendar, and was staged before a live audience rather than in a controlled laboratory environment. Co-founders of Mysten Labs, the company behind Sui, led the demonstration, including Adeniyi Abiodun. The speaker lineup also featured Raoul Pal, among other high-profile guests.

Throughput has become one of the most closely watched yardsticks in the industry, and testing in public adds a layer of scrutiny: a claim made on stage in front of an audience and an independent auditor is harder to dispute than a benchmark published after the fact.

The jump from Sui's previous best is the eye-catching part. On July 4, 2026, the network recorded 6,086,766 TPS during a livestream event involving AI agents. The new figure is more than six times that mark, achieved only a few months later.

Attendees were able to take part as well. Community prediction contests rewarded participants who most accurately forecast the transaction volume, with prizes of 10,000, 5,000, and 1,000 SUI tokens for the closest guesses.

What Sui Tunnels Actually Do

The engine behind the result is a feature Sui calls tunnels. These are programmable off-chain state channels built for high-throughput activity. Parties can exchange a huge number of transactions off the main chain, then settle the final state on-chain so the outcome stays verifiable.

That distinction matters for anyone reading the headline number. The 40 million figure reflects what the tunnel architecture can handle with on-chain settlement behind it, not a claim that every one of those transactions was individually written to the base layer as it occurred.

The Agentic Finance Pitch

Sui is positioning the test as groundwork for what it calls agentic finance. The idea is that AI and machine learning systems will carry out transactions in commerce autonomously, without a human approving each step. That framing connects directly to the earlier July record, which was set during an event built around AI agents — and it gives tunnels a clear use case, since bursts of machine-initiated activity are precisely the workload off-chain channels are built to absorb before settling on-chain.

Why the Verification Matters

Having CertiK verify the result live during the event gives the figure more weight than a self-reported benchmark — a point that matters especially here, because tunnel activity takes place off-chain rather than being individually recorded on the base layer. Future performance reports, including information from CertiK's verification process, are expected to shed further light on the network's capabilities, and on how the tunnel architecture performs under day-to-day conditions rather than in a single demonstration.