• Sui is a Layer 1 blockchain and innovative contract platform designed to make digital asset ownership fast, private, secure, and accessible to everyone. 

• Based on the Move programming language, its object-centric model enables parallel execution, sub-second finality, and rich on-chain assets. 

• With horizontally scalable processing and storage, Sui supports a wide range of applications with unrivaled speed at a low cost. Sui is a step-function advancement in Blockchain and a platform on which creators and developers can build unique, user-friendly experiences.

What Is Sui?

Sui Blockchain aims to introduce decentralized technology to the general public. Users employ its token, SUI, to secure the network, cover gas fees, conduct on-chain transactions, and, eventually, empower governance.

Former employees of Meta, who were involved in the Diem blockchain project (previously called Libra), established Mysten Labs, the initial contributor to Sui. As part of that work, they developed new technologies such as Move, a new clever contract programming language, and the high-throughput mem pool and consensus engines called Narwhal and Bullshark, respectively. 

Their work on Diem became fundamental to Sui’s design. However, these innovations have been altered and expanded upon to suit the needs of a permissionless Layer 1 blockchain. In addition, Libra’s mission is to develop a compliant micropayment platform.

How Does Sui Work?

Sui uses objects instead of accounts to store data, unlike most blockchains. These programmable user-level assets are defined, created, and managed by developers. The smart contract that generates an object can adjust its attributes, including ownership. On-chain objects and details are saved instead of in intelligent contracts.

Most assets on Sui have one address as a data value. We call these “owned objects.” A value change is all it takes to transfer ownership. These transactions are network-independent and can be executed simultaneously. Most blockchain transactions fall into this category, including asset transfers, peer-to-peer payments, and NFT minting.

Basics of Blockchain: Details of Sui, Sui optimizes ordinary transactions. No matter how complex, other Blockchains must verify and process every trade into a total-ordered list through global consensus. So, this typical architecture might bottleneck the network, slowing transaction processing and limiting transaction volume.

A “Byzantine Consistent Broadcast” algorithm reduces the bottleneck and boosts throughput and latency for Sui. A requestor or proxy can negotiate with validators to process without consensus, achieving near-instant finality without compromising security. This enables substantial parallel transaction submission and execution.

A transaction that updates data on Sui assets with shared ownership requires authentication from numerous accounts. These complex transactions require consensus validation. Sui manages the agreement via Delegated Proof of Stake. Sui’s consensus engine is Narwhal and Tusk. Trades are held in Narwhal (mempool) so validators can process them. Tusk orders shared object transactions.

What Makes Sui Unique?

Sui’s object-centric data model is a critical innovation that allows for many other technical breakthroughs on the chain. 

Sui Move

Sui Move is the native programming language for Sui. It was designed to incorporate everything a blockchain developer would need to create performant, secure, feature-rich applications.

Sui Move is based on the Move language, specifically designed to improve flaws in other intelligent contract programming languages. The Move addresses two critical issues in clever contract design: representation of digital assets and safe operations over them. Activity has first-class abstractions of support and access control that improve the safety of smart contracts and the productivity of intelligent contract programmers. Moreover, Sui Move builds on this achievement and adds language for blockchain-specific concepts such as accounts, transactions, time, and cryptography.

Programmable Transaction Blocks (PTB)

Programmable Transaction Blocks and PTBs are equally important among Sui’s most potent core developer primitives. For conventional blockchains, the fundamental unit of execution is a transaction that is typically simplistic and close to the virtual machine (VM) execution. So, in Sui, the platform elevates the basic unit of execution to the level of a complex and composable sequence of transactions.

Basics of Blockchain: Details of Sui, PTBs are heterogeneous and can access any public on-chain Move function across all smart contracts. Within a single PTB, typed outputs from earlier on-chain Move calls can be chained as typed inputs to later on-chain Move calls. These types can be arbitrary Sui objects that carry a rich set of attributes and properties. A single PTB can extract a player object from an intelligent contract wallet, use it to make a move in a game, and then send a badge object won by the action to a multi-game trophy case, all without publishing any new smart contract code. There can be up to 1,024 heterogeneous transactions in a single PTB, making its compositionality nearly unbounded.

Chained transactions in a PTB execute and fail atomically, meaning they can not be partially processed. So, this provides a convenient and intuitive programming model and solid guarantees for payment or finance-oriented applications.

Horizontal Scalability

Sui scales horizontally to meet the increased demand on the network. Validators can add more computing power to improve their performance as needed and reduce it when not required. Sui’s tokenomics model maintains low and stable gas fees even during periods of high network traffic. Besides, the strong incentive for validators to enhance capacity stems from their ability to earn higher gas fees without incurring additional costs.

Basics of Blockchain: Details of Sui, Sui’s scalability extends beyond transaction processing limitations. And then storage is also low-cost and horizontally scalable. This enables developers to define complex assets with rich attributes that live directly on-chain instead of introducing layers of indirection into off-chain storage to save on gas fees.

What is the SUI token?

SUI tokens serve four purposes on the network:

• Stakers can stake them to a validator for network security and to earn stake rewards.

• Users can use them to pay gas fees for executing transactions and other operations.

• They act as the native asset to facilitate on-chain transactions underpinning the Sui economy.

• They give holders the right to participate in future governance.

• The total SUI token’s supply is at 10 billion tokens.

The Sui Ecosystem

Sui Mainnet launched in May 2023. Since then, the development team has released a series of games and plans to launch more fun in the upcoming year. DeFi apps and NFT projects are also beginning to sprout; moreover, exciting apps designed later in 2023.

SuiFrens

SuiFrens demonstrates Sui Move’s capabilities, bringing to life the composability, extensibility, and dynamism of digital assets on Sui. So, the family currently consists of Capybaras and Bullsharks, with more to come.

Pyth Oracle

Pyth connects high-fidelity market data from the world’s largest professional traders and exchanges to any smart contract, anywhere.

Game 8192

SUI 8192 is an entirely on-chain and extra challenging version of the famous 2048 game built on the Sui blockchain by Ethos.

Suia

As a proof-of-attendance app, Suia verifies participation in Sui-based events. Organizers can use it with event tickets, contribution medals, and games to engage participants and award their involvement.

What’s Next for Sui?

Sui continues developing unique features and focuses on introducing developers to the Sui Move programming language and supporting them in building apps across all industries.

Some recent and upcoming features include: 

Sponsored Transactions

To process a transaction on Sui, a user must pay a gas fee. However, many users new to Blockchains are unfamiliar with this concept, which can be a barrier to completing their transactions. So, to remove the friction of asking the user to pay the fee, sponsored transactions, enabled through gas stations, let application builders pay the price, never needing to reveal its existence to the user. Furthermore, builders can explore other revenue models, such as advertising, subscriptions, or premium add-ons.

Kiosk Standard

The kiosk is primitive for building open, zero-fee trading platforms with a high degree of customization over transfer policies. Furthermore, creators can issue guidelines along with objects, granting them the authority to enforce any trade constraint, including royalty policies, upon selling a thing.

Closing Thoughts

The creators considered Sui a new kind of Blockchain, giving power to various industries and uses to make the most of decentralized technology. So, as a result, its new ideas can change how everyone owns things and provide practical answers to issues people deal with everywhere.