Golden Encyclopedia | Is SUI the future of decentralized networks?

Author: Bradley Peak, CoinTelegraph; Compiler: Baishui, Golden Finance

1. What is Sui Network?

Sui Network is a novel blockchain platform designed to address industry challenges such as scalability, speed, and cost.

Sui was launched in May 2023 by Mysten Labs, a company founded by former Meta engineers involved in the Facebook Diem project (formerly Libra), to provide a decentralized solution capable of processing a large number of transactions with minimal latency.

One of Sui's outstanding features is its parallel transaction processing. While other networks such as Solana and Avalanche use similar technologies, Sui stands out by reducing the complexity of coordination between validators.

This simplified approach makes the network more efficient and scalable, maintaining high throughput even under heavy traffic without bottlenecks that typically affect other blockchains.

As part of this, Sui introduces an object-centric model. This not only allows for more granular transaction processing; it also allows digital assets to evolve and change over time, rather than remain static.

This makes the platform ideal for applications involving non-fungible tokens (NFTs), GameFi, and decentralized finance (DeFi), where assets often need to be updated or modified. In contrast, blockchains such as Solana and Avalanche are optimized for speed but lack this flexibility in handling dynamic data.

In fact, as of September 2024, Sui has achieved significant growth, with more than 18.19 million active accounts and more than 4.58 billion transactions processed. These figures highlight Sui's widespread adoption among developers and users, especially for decentralized applications (DApps) that require high performance and low latency.

Second, the core technology behind the Sui blockchain

Sui's core technologies include its innovative Move programming language, advanced parallel transaction processing, and delegated proof of stake (DPoS) consensus mechanism, making it a highly scalable and efficient blockchain.

Architecture and Consensus Mechanism

Sui’s architecture relies on its Move programming language, which was originally developed for the Diem blockchain.

Move enables the creation of smart contracts and digital assets in a more flexible and secure way than other popular languages, such as Solidity (used by Ethereum). This makes it ideal for games, DeFi, and NFTs, applications that require assets to change state without being plagued by typical transaction bottlenecks.

At its core, Sui uses a delegated proof-of-stake (DPoS) consensus mechanism. This mechanism allows users to stake their Sui tokens to support validators, who are responsible for verifying and processing transactions. More on this later.

Did you know? The Move programming language is specifically designed to prioritize resource ownership and security, making it particularly resistant to common vulnerabilities such as reentrancy attacks. The language’s inherent focus on asset ownership ensures that digital assets are more securely managed.

Technology that supports scalability and efficiency

Sui’s take on parallel transaction processing is one of its most innovative technologies. Sui has been tested to handle up to 297,000 transactions per second (TPS), far exceeding the capacity of other blockchains that support parallel transaction processing, such as Solana, Avalanche, and Polkadot.

In addition, Sui uses a novel transaction sharding approach, in which different transactions are processed by different validators across the network. In short, this approach allows the blockchain to handle workloads more efficiently because the tasks are distributed across the network, reducing the risk of congestion and ensuring that transaction fees remain low even under high demand.

Ensuring Security and Low Latency

To keep latency low, Sui uses an optimized consensus engine called Mysticeti, which significantly reduces the finality time of transactions.

In blockchain terms, "finality" refers to the point at which a transaction is deemed irreversible. Sui's consensus design achieves sub-second finality, which is essential for speed-critical applications such as gaming or high-frequency DeFi transactions.

Enhanced security through multiple layers of protection. The network's object-centric model allows developers to write more secure smart contracts by limiting the attack vectors typically associated with blockchain platforms. In addition, Sui's DPoS mechanism ensures that validators are incentivized to act in the best interests of the network, and any malicious behavior can be quickly identified and punished.

Three, SUI Token Economics

The SUI token is the native token of the Sui blockchain, used for staking, governance, and incentivizing network participants. Its upper limit supply is 10 billion tokens, allocated to community development, contributors, investors, and development.

The SUI token plays a core role in maintaining network operations and incentivizing participants. For example:

• Validators are rewarded by staking SUI tokens and verifying transactions, which helps ensure network security.

• Grants and incentives from the community reserve provide support to developers, encouraging them to build DApps that drive platform innovation.

• Users can also stake their SUI tokens to support validators, earning rewards. Additionally, users participate in network governance by voting on key proposals, giving them a say in shaping the future of Sui.

Finally, the total supply of SUI is capped at 10 billion tokens, which are distributed across several categories to support the long-term growth and decentralization of the network:

IV. Sui Blockchain Use Cases

From DeFi to gaming and supply chain management, Sui’s architecture supports fast and efficient transactions, making it an attractive platform for developers looking to build on cutting-edge blockchains.

Decentralized Finance (DeFi)

Due to its advantages, Sui has quickly become a strong competitor in the DeFi space. Some of the key DeFi platforms that have integrated with Sui include:

• DeepBook: Sui’s native decentralized exchange (DEX) acts as a central limit order book, allowing users to trade assets with low fees and high liquidity. This infrastructure supports a growing number of DeFi applications and helps create a more seamless trading experience.

• Turbos Finance:An automated market maker (AMM) built on Sui that provides non-custodial services to provide liquidity and token swaps. The project is backed by Jump Crypto and provides users with an efficient DeFi environment with competitive yields.

Games and NFTs

As explored, Sui’s object-centric model makes it particularly well suited for dynamic assets like NFTs and in-game items that can evolve over time. Here are two examples:

• SUI 8192:A decentralized puzzle game built on the Sui network where every player’s action is recorded as a blockchain transaction. The game mints NFTs to represent players’ achievements, demonstrating Sui’s ability to handle large-scale gaming operations.

• Grand Cross:Metaworld: Developed by Netmarble, this metaverse game uses Sui’s low-cost infrastructure to support a high-volume gaming ecosystem. Players can create, manage, and trade digital assets, including NFTs, directly on the Sui blockchain.

Did you know? Unlike many other blockchains, where gas fees are determined entirely by computational requirements, Sui charges fees based on the required computation and storage consumed by transactions. This is particularly innovative for use cases such as NFTs and dynamic assets, as users can also receive storage refunds when deleting or updating on-chain data.

Supply Chain Tracking

Sui can handle the complex data interactions required for transparent supply chain management, ensuring that the journey of each product is tracked securely and efficiently on the blockchain.

While similar projects have been implemented on other blockchains, such as IBM’s Food Trust on Hyperledger and VeChain for luxury goods tracking, with Sui’s object-centric model, supply chain assets can be updated in real time at all stages of production and distribution.

This means that while blockchain-based supply chain solutions have proven to be viable and effective, Sui has the right architecture to fully realize the potential of blockchain in supply chain tracking.

V. History of SUI Blockchain

Sui Blockchain was launched in May 2023. By September 2024, the number of active accounts had rapidly grown from 1 million to more than 18 million, and innovative features such as zkLogin were launched, with a total locked value (TVL) of more than $500 million.

Here is an overview of the history of the Sui blockchain:

• Early 2022 — The Beginning:After Meta’s Diem project was abandoned, a group of former engineers formed Mysten Labs with the goal of building a new blockchain that overcomes the scalability and performance limitations of existing platforms.

• May 3, 2023 — Mainnet Launch:Sui officially launches its mainnet, opening the platform to the public. With support from over 100 validators and 400 nodes, developers can now build and deploy DApps on the network.

• July 2023 — 1 Million Active Accounts:Just two months after launch, Sui hits a major milestone, recording over 1 million active accounts.

• August 2023 — zkLogin Launch:Sui launches zkLogin, an innovative technology that allows users to log into Web3 applications using their existing credentials on platforms like Google and Facebook. This feature greatly improves the user onboarding experience, bridging the gap between Web2 and Web3.

• November 2023 — 9 million active accounts and $500 million TVL:Sui has grown exponentially to 9 million active accounts and over $500 million in total locked value (TVL) for its DeFi protocol, marking a major leap in adoption.

• 2024 — Continued Growth:Sui’s network has over 18.19 million active accounts and has processed 4.58 billion transactions.

Sui’s Future

Looking ahead, Sui aims to enhance its already strong foundation by further optimizing its consensus mechanism and launching multiple initiatives. The Sui blog provides the latest information on future plans and developments. The ecosystem is likely to expand support for zero-knowledge rollups and other layer 2 solutions, which will increase transaction scalability and further reduce costs. Sui is also focused on expanding its DeFi ecosystem to support new financial products, services, and enhanced developer tools to create innovative DApps. In addition, there are plans to deepen partnerships with major gaming companies and explore artificial intelligence integration for decentralized applications.