Sui

Sui functions as a layer-1 blockchain platform built to facilitate global adoption by providing a development environment that is secure, powerful, and scalable. The system addresses common inefficiencies in current blockchain structures by utilizing a unique object-centric data model alongside the secure Move programming language.

Beyond its technical base, Sui focuses on improving user experience by removing typical obstacles found in blockchain interactions. By implementing features such as zkLogin, sponsored transactions, and programmable transaction blocks, the platform aims to set a higher standard for Web3 usability, ensuring that applications remain accessible and easy to use.

Sui was initially developed by Mysten Labs, a company established by former lead architects from Meta’s blockchain research division. The founding team includes:

• Evan Cheng, the CEO of Mysten Labs, who possesses over 24 years of experience in creating developer-focused technology and managing engineering groups at firms like Facebook and Apple.
• Adeniyi Abiodun, the CPO of Mysten Labs, who has directed product and engineering teams at major tech organizations such as Facebook, VMware, and Oracle, with more than 10 years of leadership in blockchain product teams.
• Sam Blackshear, the CTO of Mysten Labs, an engineer and researcher focused on developer tools, program verification, and programming language design, known for creating the Move smart contract language.
• George Danezis, the Chief Scientist of Mysten Labs, who serves as a Professor of Security and Privacy Engineering at University College London and brings over 20 years of expertise in privacy and peer-to-peer system security.
• Kostas Chalkias, the Chief Cryptographer of Mysten Labs, who holds over 10 years of experience in lead cryptographer positions at large tech companies, including R3 and Meta.

Sui distinguishes itself through an architecture designed for low-latency transactions, consistent fees, and high throughput achieved via horizontal scaling and parallel execution. This framework provides developers with robust tools to build next-generation Web3 applications.

Central to Sui’s identity is its object-oriented design, which introduces a novel approach to blockchain development. By treating everything on the network as an object, developers can define types that ensure network-wide compatibility while maintaining deep composability and strong safety measures for both users and creators. This structure allows assets and protocols to interact more effectively, fostering broader composability.

The use of objects also drives significant improvements in core network functions. Because transaction dependencies are explicitly defined, Sui can execute transactions in parallel. Furthermore, unique consensus rules permit certain transactions to bypass consensus entirely, resulting in much faster completion times. Many transactions settle in less than half a second, all while preserving high throughput and stable fees.

To address common hurdles in Web3 adoption, Sui offers native solutions for builders. Tools like zkLogin and sponsored transactions help overcome barriers related to wallet onboarding and transaction costs, respectively.

Additionally, the Move programming language on Sui is customized for its object-oriented data model. This combination creates an intuitive yet powerful development environment. The extra safety features inherent to Move on Sui aim to mitigate, or potentially eliminate, the most frequent exploits found in other smart contract languages, offering greater peace of mind for developers and users.

Users can begin using Sui immediately through Sui Wallet and zkLogin. zkLogin enables the creation and management of Sui accounts using standard web logins, such as Google. By leveraging zero-knowledge cryptography, this feature merges the ease of familiar web accounts with the security and ownership benefits of blockchain technology.

The SUI token has a maximum supply limit of 10,000,000,000 (ten billion tokens). It functions mainly to protect the network and serves as a medium for payments and accounting within the system.

At present, the SUI token fulfills three main roles on the Sui platform:

• Proof-of-stake participation - Sui employs a delegated proof-of-stake model to choose, motivate, and compensate honest conduct by Sui validators and the SUI token holders who stake with them.
• Gas fee payments - Users spend SUI tokens to cover the gas fees necessary for executing transactions and storing data onchain.
• Utility across applications - SUI is a flexible and liquid asset applicable in various parts of Sui’s ecosystem, including decentralized exchanges, lending and borrowing platforms, games, and more.
• Governance - The SUI token is planned to hold a significant position in the future governance of Sui by giving holders the ability to take part in onchain voting regarding key matters, such as protocol updates and platform modifications.

Furthermore, the Sui storage fund helps distribute stake rewards over time and pays future validators for the storage costs of data previously stored onchain. This economic structure establishes a way for users to keep data onchain permanently while fairly rewarding both current and future validators for storage, supporting long-term viability.

Sui relies on a delegated proof of stake (PoS) system to protect the network against sybil attacks, with validators and delegators operating in a manner comparable to other dPoS frameworks.

The distinct feature of Sui’s architecture lies in its consensus protocols. It employs Narwhal, a protocol designed to build and efficiently handle a mempool for the directed acyclic graph (DAG) structure used by Sui. The Bullshark consensus protocol then retrieves transactions from the Narwhal mempool to validate and finalize them. As noted previously, some transactions can skip the consensus process entirely, utilizing the Byzantine Consistent Broadcast mechanism instead to reach finality in under half a second while providing true settlement guarantees.

In testing environments, this network design has demonstrated the ability to achieve transaction speeds exceeding 297,000 transactions per second.

You can buy SUI on a variety of centralized exchanges, such as Binance, Coinbase, KuCoin, Bybit, Kraken, and Bitfinex, among others.

SuiNS functions as a naming service for the Sui network, assigning readable identifiers like alice.sui to Sui accounts. By linking these names to specific addresses, it simplifies transactions and improves the user experience by removing the need to handle complex account details.

These names exist as NFTs within the user’s wallet, meaning they inherit the ownership advantages typical of Sui objects. The platform also supports personalization through avatars, which are themselves NFTs that utilize Sui’s composable object features to provide diverse graphical options. Furthermore, SuiNS integrates with IPFS websites, allowing users to build anything from simple informational pages to complex, dynamic sites.

DeFi Projects on SUI:

• Turbos Finance - concentrated liquidity, hyper-efficient decentralized exchange allowing users to trade assets at great prices and earn rewards by providing liquidity.
• BlueFin - decentralized derivatives exchange that offers high performance, low costs, and a Web2-like user experience.
• Aftermath - an all-in-one platform for trading, liquid staking, and earning yield that is fast, inexpensive, and fully transparent.
• Sudo Finance - real world asset & derivatives exchange protocol allowing high leverage trading with zero slippage.
• NAVI - borrow and lending protocol on Sui, enabling users to participate as liquidity providers and borrowers with powerful features such as automatic leverage vaults.
• Cetus Protocol - a decentralized exchange and concentrated liquidity protocol built on the Sui utilizing a flexible underlying liquidity network to make trading easier for any user.

NFTs on Sui:

• NFT marketplace providing access to Sui assets include Hyperspace and Tradeport, among others.