What is Sui?
Sui (pronounced “swee”) is a layer 1 proof-of-stake blockchain that supports smart contracts. Mysten Labs, a firm created by ex-employees of Meta’s (Facebook) Project Libra, is working on the project.
Libra is a permissioned blockchain and stablecoin payment system that never really took off. Some of the developers who worked on Project Libra (formerly known as Diem) now work on Aptos and Sui.
Mysten Labs is also backed by well-known venture capital firms. Circle, Binance Labs, and Electric Capital are among them. Through scalability and low latency, the Sui/Mysten team hopes to provide a better user experience. The Sui network will enable developers and designers to personalize user experiences.
How does Sui work?
Sui runs on a 24-hour cycle of epochs. Every era is managed by a committee of validators. From epoch to epoch, the permission-less validator set gets rearranged.
Validators can be assigned stakes by users. You can consolidate voting rights and earn a portion of the fees by delegating your stake. Furthermore, the Sui network retains its security qualities as long as honest parties hold a quorum of two-thirds of the total stake.
Validators can scale horizontally by sharding within themselves. As a result, nodes can scale by allocating additional resources. This could be accomplished using the CPU, memory, or storage within a machine or across numerous machines.
Gas pricing and fees
Gas expenses are one of the most significant barriers to blockchain adoption. Users must pay gas in order to complete transactions and have them included in blocks. Without gas, bad actors would spam the network, resulting in a denial of service assault.
When the network activity on a blockchain increases, transactions will fight for block space. As a result, costs rise, networks get congested, and users have a negative experience.
Sui uses a price-setting method to take a dynamic approach to fees. Validators vote on a network-wide reference price at the start of each epoch. This strategy allows users to have more predictable gas fees.
Storage charges
Users must pay different costs for transaction execution and data storage. When a user contributes data to Sui’s “storage fund,” they must pay gas and Sui fees. The fund covers the expense of validators storing data; as the network develops, so does the cost of storage.
Move programming language
The Sui blockchain’s programming language is Move. This language differs slightly from core Move, which is based on the Rust programming language and was created by Meta (Facebook).
Sui, Diem, and Aptos all use the Move programming language. Aptos was formed by former Meta employees. Move is used to develop smart contracts on Sui.
Except for Keys and global storage operators, Sui will operate with Move code from other systems. The primary distinctions between Move Core and Sui Move are as follows:
- Addresses represent object IDs
- Sui entry points take object references as inputs
- Sui uses its own object-centric global storage
- Has module initializers
- Objects have globally unique IDs
Parallel transaction execution
Transaction parallelization is one of the most intriguing wonders of Sui’s scalability. Most blockchains execute transactions sequentially — or one by one. This eliminates the possibility of transactional competition and double-spending. This, however, limits throughput.
Sui can apparently execute up to 120,000 transactions per second on a MacBook Pro thanks to parallel transaction execution. Ethereum, for example, can handle 7-15 transactions per second. Visa is capable of processing 24,000 transactions per second.
Many transactions have no sophisticated dependence on other arbitrary aspects of the blockchain’s state. Most of the time, users merely want to transmit an asset to a recipient. Sui’s consensus techniques cut down on the amount of communication required between validators to conduct transactions. As a result, basic transfers are validated virtually instantaneously, and complex transactions are completed in 2-3 seconds.
Sui consensus mechanism
Sui’s consensus mechanism is responsible for all of this. Sui’s consensus method is created collaboratively by Narwhal, Bullshark, and Tusk. These systems divide the network’s responsibilities.
- Narwhal: guarantees data availability.
- Bullshark or Tusk: agrees on the specific data ordering.
Sui’s avant-garde approach to a mempool is one of its distinguishing traits. Sui has a mempool that is based on a directed acyclic graph (DAG), which is enabled by Narwhal. At the execution layer, the DAG enables for parallelization processing.
Bullshark has taken the role of Tusk as the default consensus component to improve latency and fairness – even sluggish validators can contribute. Tusk, on the other hand, is still usable.
Aptos vs. Sui
Aptos and Sui have several similarities: they are both the spiritual successors of Diem, both blockchains were founded by Meta (Facebook), and both employ the Move programming language. They even have a few of the same investors.
Aptos makes advantage of Move’s global storage, whereas Sui makes its own. Furthermore, Aptos lacks the concept of resources or objects possessing other resources. Any Sui address can own an infinite number of the same resource type. A single Sui account could have ten separate Sui token objects, each with a different value.
Sui is said to be capable of 120,000 transactions per second, whereas Aptos is said to be capable of 160,000 transactions per second. This number, however, dropped substantially upon the opening of the mainnet.
Sui’s roadmap
Sui’s devnet was made available in May 2022. It was made up of four Mysten Labs nodes and a Sui Explorer. On November 17, 2022, the blockchain launched its first testnet, Sui Testnet Wave 1.
🎉🥳Hello Validators! A milestone for the #Sui history books: Sui Testnet Wave 1 is live!🌊
This is a huge step towards a decentralized Sui Mainnet, as this is the first instance of a Sui Network with non-Mysten Labs operators.
Builders: continue building on Devnet 🧵(1/8)
— Sui (@SuiNetwork) November 17, 2022
The testnet gradually added and stress-tested the features and methods that would be required for a production-ready mainnet. Its goal was to gain operational experience while validating designs, validators, full nodes, wallets, and developer toolchains. The testnet was divided by “waves”: Network, Staking, and Updates.
SUI created a Permanent Testnet on March 29, 2023, following the success of both rounds of the Testnet. This will continue to function even when the Mainnet is activated.
The Permanent Testnet, according to the team, is the first version of Sui DevX 1.0. It integrates essential dev primitives derived through community input implementation and serves as the foundation for improving Sui’s developer ergonomics and efficiency.
👀Long-running. Permissionless. Decentralized.
🎉It’s Permanent Testnet!🎉
Let’s dive into the new features, core developer primitives, and more 👇🧵 pic.twitter.com/AzEELdKujN
— Sui (@SuiNetwork) March 29, 2023
Sui’s roadmap for 2023 appears to be packed. The chart below explains the Sui blockchain’s current and future capabilities. While the Sui team has not yet provided a particular date for the mainnet debut, a recent official tweet notes that “The Wave to Mainnet has begun,” with a Q2 2023 launch planned.
How to buy SUI crypto
While the general market is not yet accessible, SUI is now available through a community access program for 594 million $SUI tokens.
When General Sales commence, users will be able to purchase $SUI for $0.1. As of April 15, 2023, white-listed community members dubbed Sui Champions & Supporters can purchase $SUI in Whitelist Sales for $0.03 via OKX, KuCoin, or ByBit.
According to the terms of the community access program, champions were “moderators and testers who significantly contributed to the network.” Meanwhile, the Sui Discord community members who joined before February 1, 2023 are classified as supporters.
Sui Network released the 594M $SUI token community access program today.
– No airdrops!
– Users can buy $SUI at a price of $0.1 in General Sales.
– Only Sui Champions & Supporters can buy $SUI at a price of $0.03 in Whitelist Sales.#SuiNetwork #Sui #Airdrop pic.twitter.com/og07pV0cAI
— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) April 15, 2023
The cryptocurrency will be released at the start of the mainnet and thereafter as stake subsidies. “Some of the tokens will be set aside for the Mysten Labs team, Sui contributors, investors, and stake subsidies,” previously remarked Alonso de Gortari, Head Economist of Mysten Labs.
SUI will also be handed to the Sui Foundation, a separate entity from Mysten Labs. The Sui Foundation’s allocation will be used to fund:
Sui blockchain hackathons, conferences, documentation, and applications.
- Standards and practices for DeFi, Sui blockchain wallets, infrastructure, and digital identification are examples of projects.
- Teams of developers who will create goods to entice consumers to the Sui blockchain.
Can Sui deliver?
Will Sui deliver on its significant promises and mounting community expectations? Firstly, 120,000 transactions per second for a blockchain is impressive but still almost unthinkable. This is a lot, even for a permissioned blockchain. There is a vast degree of separation between processing simple asset transfers and complex multithreaded computations.
In theory, Ethereum could process more transactions if they were simple transfers alone. Complex DeFi applications and services require smart contracts that depend on other smart contracts. This means that a “single” transaction can have multiple dependencies.
These transactions require more gas to complete. Ethereum transactions, and blocks, have gas limits. This decreases the number of transactions that a single block can handle.
Can Sui’s design solve scalability and gas woes?
Many people have postulated parallel processing, but no one has created a project that can take use of the network effect. This will be required to verify the execution environment of any network. The Sui consensus method was designed to operate in an environment focused on basic asset transfers.
Sui’s shift to parallel transaction processing as opposed to sequential processing could be beneficial. Only time will tell whether Sui’s approach to the scalability trilemma is successful.
