What is Sui Blockchain?

In light of recent trends, interest in web3 and blockchain technology has increased significantly over the past year. And it appears this interest may never fade away, with the total blockchain market value possibly hitting $67 billion by 2026.

The global adoption and curiosity about the blockchain and web3 have thus resulted in more and subsequent launches of new blockchain projects. Another addition is the Sui blockchain, a new layer 1 project that promises scalability and latency for developer use cases.

What Is Sui Blockchain?

Sui is a decentralized layer 1 blockchain designed to simplify the development of Web3 experiences.

Created by developers at Mysten Labs, Sui is integrated using MOVE, a next-level smart contract programming language derived from Meta’s since-abandoned crypto network, Diem. With experience working on Diem, the co-founders came together to develop Sui as a highly scalable network based on the proof of stake consensus mechanism.

Sui is a smart contract platform integrated with novel blockchain technology that ensures horizontal scaling and low latency on the network. It was built to support simple web3 projects and has a simplified user experience to that end.

A Brief History of Sui

Sui blockchain was developed by the web3 infrastructure company Mysten Labs. The team of co-founders includes Adeyemi Abiodun, one of the veterans who worked on the since-abandoned blockchain project by Facebook, Diem network. Evan Cheng, co-founder, and CEO spent the last decade and a half at mainstream tech companies Apple and Meta. Cheng, Adeniyi Adeyemi, and two more former Facebook employees were instrumental in developing the Move programming language used in the Diem Project.

Using the same programming language, they developed the Sui blockchain to rival Ethereum and other mainstream networks in terms of scalability and use cases. Traditional blockchains often become more expensive as their user base expands. To combat this problem, the Sui blockchain features technology that allows the blockchain to accommodate millions and even billions of users.

The Sui blockchain project has garnered wide support from investors. In its Series A funding round, the company raised up to $36 million from investors such as Coinbase Ventures, Standard Crypto, Redpoint, and Lightspeed. The second round of funding, led by FTX Ventures, brought in even more funding, and at finalization, the company was valued at over $2 billion.

How Does Sui Blockchain Work?

Sui is a distributed ledger with a unique method of storing events on the blockchain. Sui keeps a record of each programmable object, a unit of storage on the platform used to refer to smart contracts, and attaches a globally unique ID to it. All the objects can be traced back to a single address, with each address owning many objects.

At each transaction’s processing, the transaction’s record is added to the Sui ledger via a wallet address. The transaction may be one that creates smart contracts, destroys, or even transfers ownership to a different address. So, the transactions on the Sui blockchain are validated and executed parallelly by validators who utilize the Byzantine Consistent Broadcast.

Within the Sui ecosystem, all transactions are categorized into two: Owned objects and Shared objects. While the former can be used by a specific owner, the latter is available for modification by more than one user.

With traditional blockchains, all transactions are processed and agreed upon by all the validators to achieve a consensus. Sui, instead, applies the consensus mechanism to shared objects only. By forgoing the consensus mechanism for owned objects, the blockchain can achieve low latency. Sui employs the Narwhal and Bullshark DAG-based meme pool and efficient Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) consensus for this transaction process.

Sui Blockchain Architecture

The Sui blockchain white paper expresses that the project is made up primarily of three components. The three components, objects, transactions, and validators, reside at the core of the Sui ecosystem. What are these concepts?

Transactions: All changes and updates included in the Sui ledger are referred to as transactions. Each transaction on the Sui network has a common metadata set, including gas price, epochs, and sender address.

Objects: Objects are the basic unit of storage within the Sui ecosystem. These objects are programmable and managed by smart contracts, Move Packages. All Sui objects fall into mutable data values and immutable packages.

Validators: Like other PoS consensus mechanism networks, Sui is run by independent validators, all of whom run an instance of Sui’s software on a different machine. The validators are responsible for receiving and processing “read and write” requests sent in by clients.

What Makes Sui Blockchain Unique?

As expressed by the team at Mysten Labs, the Sui blockchain comprises several technologies that set it apart from the competition. Some of these features include:

Move Programming Language

Developers of the Diem network are at the helm of this byte code language. On Sui, MOVE helps to prevent poison tokens and vulnerabilities. MOVE allows for the development of customizable transaction logic and smart contracts. The platform-agnostic nature of the language allows for shared libraries and tools, further fostering the community of developers on blockchains across the space. With Move on Sui, developers can seamlessly transition from web 2 to web3.

Parallel Transaction Execution

The Sui blockchain processes transactions using the byzantine consistent broadcast, which allows it to discard global consensus while maintaining tight security. Compared to traditional blockchains, Sui validates transactions individually. With this method of processing transactions, Sui is capable of high scalability while maintaining reasonable transaction fees.

Streamlined Developer User Experience

The baseline programming language of Sui allows developers to do less when writing code for their projects. Because the blockchain has oriented the Move Programming language, developers no longer need to worry about writing boilerplate code and can build without worrying and errors in the code.

Additionally, Sui has provided a Sui Development Kit (SDK) that comprises various tools that will enable developers to fully utilize the blockchain’s potential in building their projects.

SUI Explorer

Launched in August, the Sui explorer is a transparency tool designed by the Sui developer team to facilitate transparency and decentralization. The Sui Explorer allows Sui users and developers to inspect, view analytics, confirm their activities and verify transactions on the chain.

The Sui explorer is designed to comprise accurate, timely data regarding on-chain activity and metrics. Users can verify and track their assets and smart contracts with the tool. The Sui explorer tool is also designed to be useful for debugging and auditing. Developers can access the tool to improve their smart contracts using the Sui Move programming language.

What Is the SUI Token?

Capped at a total supply of 10 billion, SUI is the native token of the Sui project. A share of which will be available at the launch of the mainnet. The remaining tokens will be distributed as staking rewards and subsidies over the following years.

SUI Use Cases

The SUI token was designed to have many functionalities within the Sui project. SUI Token’s use cases include

1. Gas fees: The SUI Token is used on the platform to pay for gas fees on transactions and when interacting with sophisticated applications.
2. Staking: The platform’s consensus mechanism requires validators to commit a stake in SUI to validate on their network. Alternatively, other SUI Token holders can choose to delegate their token as a stake to validators on the network.
3. Governance: Like most decentralized finance projects, owners of the SUI Token can participate in the governance process of the platform.
4. Rewards: Staking rewards and compensation for validators are paid in SUI.
5. Medium of exchange: SUI also serves as a form of digital money. It is used as a medium of exchange and as a store of value.

Projects on the Sui Blockchain

Considering the novelty of Sui, it is no wonder that the project’s ecosystem is yet to host a variety of DeFi projects. While the mainnet is yet to launch, Sui has worked closely with two projects SoWork and Panzerdogs.

SoWork

SoWork is a metaverse project that is seeking to move workplace processes on-chain. For this purpose, SoWork has selected Sui as its underlying chain and uses it to power its assets: land, items, and achievements by way of mutable NFTs.

Through the Sui blockchain, SoWork plans to implement two main features:

1. Employee Achievement NFTs: This feature will allow companies and workplaces to reward their outstanding employees with Non-Fungible tokens (NFTs). The companies have the free will to determine the criteria for winning the NFT and attach unlockable perks to the awards. Awards under this feature can be presented based on some factors, including merit, values, and events.

2. NFT Minting using MapMaker: SoWork’s integrated feature mapmaker will also allow users to mint unique NFTs that can be imported to their metaverses. The NFTs can also feature various elements, including furniture and clothing. The feature allows for a seamless process of minting and importing.

Panzerdogs

Developed by LuckyKat Studios, Panzerdogs is a demo NFT gaming project that depicts Sui’s performance with hosting gaming and blockchain projects.

The Panzerdogs project allows users to utilize personal in-game assets to battle each other. Sui is the perfect host for the project because of its consensus model and high transaction processing speed. The blockchain also enables the importation and upgrading of personal NFTs into games to enhance the gaming experience.

Sui & Aptos

In the crypto space, Aptos and Sui have often been mixed up. While the two blockchains have similar origins, they are independent projects.

Nevertheless, there are some similarities between both projects. Like its predecessor, the Sui project was created as an alternative and improved option for mainstream blockchains. Sui and Aptos depend on the bytecode programming language MOVE for their operations.

Aptos and Sui are capable of scaling horizontally due to their parallel transaction execution feature and consensus technologies. The projects have also received significant funding and have close figures of valuation.

Currently, the major distinction between the two projects is their launch and the number of projects built on them. While Aptos’ mainnet is yet to launch, the Aptos ecosystem is home to many blockchain projects. Sui’s experience is limited to 2 projects. Further, the Sui blockchain was created to center gaming and NFTs, while Aptos is more tailored to the user and developer experience.

Conclusion

The Sui blockchain appears to have a lot of potential, and a number of blockchain enthusiasts seem to appreciate its novel technological features, development strategy, and objectives. Given that various DeFi, gaming, and payment protocols often involve straightforward transactions, Sui’s architecture makes it a perfect substrate for these applications. These straightforward transactions are not constrained by underlying block times and can be carried out with close to real-time finality.