On July 4, 2026, the Sui blockchain reached a staggering peak of 6,086,766 transactions per second (TPS) during a public experiment that showcased the power of its new 'programmable tunnels' technology. The event, livestreamed and open to anyone, involved autonomous AI agents battling across games, payments, and chat, all contributing to a single goal: surpassing 1 million TPS. Sui not only met that target but exceeded it more than sixfold, roughly 20 times higher than its previous benchmark of 297,000 TPS set in a controlled environment.
The demo was led by Kostas Chalkias, Chief Cryptographer and co-founder of Mysten Labs, and Daniel Lam, a lead engineer on Mysten’s Sui hacker team. Participants accessed the experiment via email using zkLogin, a Sui primitive that eliminates the need for a traditional crypto wallet. They received a test token, MTPS, and gas was fully sponsored, allowing users with no prior SUI holdings to join. AI agents and humans then opened offchain channels—dubbed programmable tunnels—to play blackjack, Quantum Poker, draw on a shared canvas, and transact, all gaslessly and offchain. Every channel closure was mutually cosigned and verifiable onchain, ensuring cryptographic integrity.
Chalkias emphasized that programmable tunnels go beyond payments, enabling agent-to-agent commerce, competitive gaming, and prediction markets at massive scale. He described a future where companies' trading agents could compete millions of times without touching the base chain, and where offchain locked funds could facilitate transactions even during internet outages. Mysten Labs plans to add confidential transfers via Nautilus, multi-participant tunnels, and agent-to-agent prediction markets.
