What is Sui Blockchain?
Sui is a high-performance Layer 1 (L1) blockchain being developed by Mysten Labs to serve decentralized, latency-sensitive applications. How does it work? What are the prospects of the projects? Let’s find out together!
The Sui blockchain, like Aptos, is based on the work of Diem, a failed Meta Corporation blockchain platform. Sui code was written using a modified version of the Move language developed for Diem.
The Proof-of-Stake algorithm with stacking and delegation capabilities ensures the Sui network’s operation and security.
Sui’s consensus procedure employs the novel Narwhal and Bullshark protocols, which enable parallel computing, making Sui highly scalable.
Who develops and finances the project?
Sui blockchain is being developed by Mysten Labs, which was founded in September 2021 in California by a group of former top executives and developers at Novi Research, a division of Meta Corporation that worked on the Diem blockchain and Move programming language. Evan Cheng, former director of research and development at Novi Research, is the co-founder and CEO of Mysten Labs.
The new project was first publicly announced on March 22, 2022, and work on it began in the fall of 2021.
The startup has raised funds in two rounds. The well-known Andreessen Horowitz fund led the $36 million Series A round in early 2022, the second Series B round raised $300 million, and Mysten Labs was valued at $2 billion.
The Sui test network launched in August 2022.
Features and benefits of Sui
Sui developers are positioning it as a general-purpose network with high bandwidth, fast and cheap transactions, and an easy-to-use Web3 interface. Mysten Labs’ mission is to build a platform for running high-performance decentralized applications.
The architecture of Sui is described in detail in the whitepaper and technical documentation. A special feature of the project is the use of its own programming language Sui Move — a modified version of Move developed for the Diem project. While in other blockchains the basic unit of storage is an account, in Sui these are objects that are created and managed by smart contracts. An object can be any type of asset, and each of them has a unique identifier, an owner, and the property of being changeable or immutable.
Each object on the Sui blockchain has a causal history dating back to its inception. Transactions with them can be processed in any order or in parallel if their histories do not overlap. Sui can process groups of transactions in parallel, but without the risk of double spending, thanks to this feature.
This feature allows for horizontal scaling of network bandwidth, with overall performance determined solely by the number of nodes processing transactions. Under test conditions, the Sui blockchain showed a speed of more than 120,000 transactions per second with an average latency of about 2 seconds.
How does Sui work?
Sui blockchain employs the well-known Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus algorithm. Transactions are processed by groups of validators whose composition is determined by the number of currently active full nodes every epoch (24 hours). As of the end of November 2022, the test network has 4 validators and more than 5,200 active nodes.
The transaction processing procedure differs depending on whether it involves a single-owner object (any type of asset) or a “shared object” (e.g., public smart contracts).
The first type of transaction includes coin transfers, NFT issuance, and voting. Such transactions are processed using a streamlined Fast Pay procedure based on the Byzantine Consistent Broadcast mechanism. It is comprised of four steps:
- The transaction is sent to a node, which “distributes” it to validators;
- Validators vote to validate the transaction and pass the result to the sender;
- The sender creates a certificate containing the signatures of at least 2/3 of the validators;
- The certificate is sent to the validators, who validate it. The transaction then enters the blockchain.
In this process, there is no consensus search between validators, which significantly reduces the transaction processing time.
In turn, the procedure for performing transactions with shared objects contains another stage — the search for consensus between validators using the Sui Consensus Engine. It consists of two components:
- Narwhal
A high-bandwidth mempool (“waiting room” for unconfirmed transactions), which is responsible for ensuring synchronization and availability of data submitted to validators for confirmation. - Bullshark
A consensus protocol built on the technologies of Directed Acyclic Graph and Byzantine Fault Tolerance. The Bullshark feature allows for consensus to be reached without the need for validators to exchange information.
This process ensures not only high network performance, but also fault tolerance, as even a large number of faulty validators does not result in performance degradation, as is the case with existing PoS blockchains.
Tokenomics and functions of Sui cryptocurrency
There is no information on when the core network and native SUI coin will be launched. However, the team has already revealed the project’s tokenomics. The maximum amount available will be 10 billion coins. A billion MIST units will be divided into each SUI coin.
Only a portion of the SUI issue will be released into circulation when the mainnet launches, with the remainder going to the Mysten Labs team, investors, community members, validator awards, and other purposes. The Sui Foundation, an organization independent of Mysten Labs that will fund hackathons, conferences, app development, and development teams, will receive a significant portion of the coins.
The SUI coin is intended to serve several functions:
- Validators rate;
- Delegating to validators via staking (for ordinary coin holders);
- Payment of transaction fees;
- Means of exchange, settlement and accumulation in the Sui ecosystem;
- Participation in Sui’s blockchain management via on-chain voting.
Each validator is assigned a certain number of SUI coins by SUI token holders. Delegated coins are locked for the duration of the epoch and receive a portion of the staking reward when the epoch ends. As a result, holders can only revoke their SUIs or change their delegate when an epoch changes. The Sui team has already stated that holders of full nodes, developers, and active participants in the test network will be rewarded. Owners of nodes will receive 2,000 SUI each after the Sui protocol is launched in the main network, which will be blocked for sale for one year.
How is the ecosystem around the Sui blockchain evolving?
The project team has already launched the basic infrastructure required to communicate with the Sui test network. The Sui Explorer block browser was released in August 2022, with a detailed display of information on blogs, addresses, and transactions.
The Sui Wallet, which is available as a Google Chrome extension, is also operational. It enables users to generate new addresses and restore existing ones with the help of a seed phrase, as well as view and manage all types of assets, including NFTs, and interact with decentralized applications. Through one of the “taps,” such as the NFT marketplace BlueMove, the wallet can be populated with SUI test tokens.
Third-party development teams are already developing more than 60 projects based on Sui. Among them:
- Decentralized exchanges Suiswap, MovEx;
- DeFi services Cetus, Porto Labs, Kxfinance, Leizd Protocol;
- Cross-chain bridges WormHole and Axelar Network;
- Domain name services Sui Name Service, Suins;
- Social networks ComingChat, AskMeX, Peeranha;
- NFT marketplaces Blue Move, Sui Art, Sui Gallery;
- NFT collections Sui Punks, Sui Birds, Sui Droplets;
- Games Trial Xtrem, F1 Dog, Netmarble.
The project’s prospects
In July 2022, Alonso de Gortari from Mysten Labs’ said at a Q&A session that the company was planning a public token sale, with the launch of the core network and SUI coins scheduled for later in the year. Since then, however, there have been no announcements or additional comments from the project team on the subject.
Recently the Sui Foundation, a non-profit organization founded on its portal, announced a grant program for developers of applications in the Sui ecosystem. Teams that create solutions for a wide range of applications, from social networks and games to payment systems, financial and legal services, will be able to receive grants of $10–100,000.
The team’s promised rewards for early test network node owners, as well as the large number of projects in the Sui ecosystem without their own tokens, have already sparked interest among retrodrops hunters. However, the chances of ordinary Sui test network users receiving rewards are unknown.
What are your thoughts? If you have anything to add to the Sui topic, please leave your comments below!
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