Sui mainnet 1.80.1 brings protocol 137 and a pull-based consensus pool
Victoria Shinder2 min readMysten Labs published Sui mainnet-v1.80.1 on 23 September, a day after the matching testnet release. It carries protocol version 137, and the release notes list changes at the protocol level, for validators and for the data APIs.
On the protocol side, verification of Ristretto255 range proofs becomes cheaper, and the limit on the number of commitments multiplied by the range bit length rises from 512 to 1,024, so larger batches can be verified in one call. The LdConst instruction now charges gas according to the abstract value size of a constant rather than its serialized byte length, which the notes say slightly increases gas costs for constant-heavy code. TransactionExpiration::Validity is now accepted on all networks, letting a transaction restrict which validators may propose it in consensus; additional signing-time checks reject structurally invalid transactions earlier; and a new memory invariant check covers reference and value usage in programmable transaction blocks. An allowances feature is added, and a check on object-funds withdrawals inside the Move VM is enabled on devnet only.
For validators there is an opt-in consensus-transaction-pool setting. When it is enabled, consensus pulls transactions from a validator-side pool prioritised by gas price at the moment a block is proposed, instead of the admission queue pushing them in. For API users, the JSON-RPC field SuiTransactionBlockEffects.shared_objects can now include implicitly read system objects, so consumers that treat it as the list of declared shared inputs must filter it against the transaction inputs.
What it means
The pull-based pool is the change with the widest implications. Letting consensus take the highest-paying transactions when it builds a block, rather than whatever arrived first, moves Sui closer to explicit fee-priority ordering. It is opt-in for now, which gives validators and application builders time to see how it behaves under load before it becomes a default.
For developers, two lines deserve action. The LdConst gas change is small but real, and contracts that embed large constants should be re-measured. The shared_objects change is the kind that breaks indexers silently: code that assumed the field only held declared inputs will start counting system objects once they appear, and the notes say so explicitly. The legacy replay tool has already been updated, which is a hint of where others will need to follow.