Suiball, a hardware wallet designed exclusively for the Sui blockchain, is winding down before a single device has reached a customer, and the company says all pre-order payments will be returned in USDC, a dollar-pegged stablecoin.

In an announcement shared on X on November 11, the company said the shutdown followed a decision by the Sui Foundation, the organization behind the layer-1 Sui network, to withdraw its backing amid mounting security concerns around hardware wallets. Suiball said the foundation judged the risk of continuing to support a hardware wallet project too high after a string of recent attacks across the industry. The company accepted the outcome, even though development was complete, manufacturing had begun and the first batch of devices was ready to ship. The result leaves pre-order customers with refunds instead of hardware, and the Sui ecosystem without the dedicated signing device Suiball was built to provide.

The closure ends a multi-year effort to build a dedicated hardware wallet for the Sui ecosystem. Citadel Wallet introduced Suiball in October 2025, presenting it as a device offering native Sui integration, clear transaction signing and support for decentralized applications. Planned features included a touchscreen, an EAL6+ secure element for isolating private keys, Bluetooth connectivity and native Bitcoin support, along with the ability to interact directly with Sui-based DeFi applications, reducing reliance on third-party wallet interfaces.

Suiball has reported no security breach affecting its own hardware and has not named the specific incidents behind the foundation's decision.

The broader hardware wallet sector, however, has run into a series of distinct security problems in recent months. In October, Ledger probed suspected wallet drains involving devices sold through the reseller CryptoBilis, while Keystone disclosed a customer data breach that exposed names, shipping addresses and purchase records. In a separate episode, Foundation Passport users were targeted by fraudulent recall notices intended to harvest recovery phrases. Those phishing attempts did not establish any vulnerability in Passport hardware.

USDC Refunds to Begin Within a Week

Suiball will process refunds through two separate channels, depending on how each order was originally placed. Both routes end in the same asset: USDC.

Approximately 80% of pre-orders were settled onchain, with buyers receiving soulbound NFTs — non-transferable tokens bound to a single wallet — representing their purchases. Those customers will have USDC airdropped directly into the wallets holding their pre-order NFTs, with no claims or additional transactions required. The first refund airdrop is expected to be completed within a week of the November 11 announcement, so onchain buyers can confirm receipt simply by checking the wallet that holds their NFT.

Customers who paid by credit card will instead receive an email asking for a Sui wallet address, with their USDC refunds sent through a second airdrop once the necessary addresses have been collected. No specific deadline has been announced for that second round, leaving card buyers without a fixed date to watch for.

The refund process also opens the door to phishing attempts aimed at customers expecting payments. Suiball stressed that it will never request seed phrases, private keys or additional payments, and told customers to respond only to emails sent from its official address.

Once all refunds have been distributed, Suiball plans to permanently delete the customer information gathered for device deliveries, including names, email addresses, shipping addresses and telephone numbers. The project will formally cease operations after the refund process is complete.