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TL;DR
Sui is a Layer 1 blockchain designed to provide top-notch developer and user experiences backed by robust technological foundations.
Employing a novel object-centric data model, Sui supports dynamic and composable on-chain assets with sub-second transaction finalization.
The Move programming language, developed by the co-founder and CTO of Mysten Labs, supports the unique qualities of smart contract programming. Move on Sui improves upon the core language, offering abstractions benefiting both developers and users.
Sui offers tools to build best-in-class user experiences – tools, such as zkLogin, offer the ability to abstract barriers to adoption away from end users.
What Is Sui?
Sui is a blockchain designed to support the needs of global adoption by offering a secure, powerful, and scalable development platform. Sui has been designed from the ground up to support such demands.
Mysten Labs, the original contributor to Sui, was founded by former employees of Meta who worked on the Diem/Libra project. During that time, they developed powerful new technologies that would become foundational to Sui, such as the Move programming language, transaction processing, and consensus mechanisms.
There are three key elements that are essential to the philosophy and design of Sui:
Data model designed for digital assets: Sui’s object-oriented data model is optimized for managing and interacting with digital assets
Move on Sui: an implementation of the Move programming language adapted to Sui’s unique data model.
Focus on best-in-class user experience: Sui supports several innovations that streamline the user experience.
Sui’s Unique Design
Sui’s object-oriented data model is a cornerstone of its design, providing robust support for the extensive capabilities of the platform. A key advantage arising from Sui’s design is the streamlined management of asset ownership. The object-centric nature ensures a more straightforward approach to asset ownership compared to conventional blockchain architectures.
Unlike most blockchains that separate ownership tracking from the asset and its corresponding account, Sui takes a unique path. In Sui's object-oriented framework, everything on the chain is represented as an object, each explicitly specifying its owner. This distinctive approach eliminates the need for a smart contract to monitor ownership, making the process of object ownership considerably more direct.
The advantages of Sui's object-oriented data model go far beyond just facilitating asset ownership. Rapid settlement, parallel transaction processing, remarkable throughput, and stable fees are among the various benefits it offers. Each of these aspects is substantial enough to warrant individual articles, all of which can be explored in detail on Sui's website.
Objects, Transaction Processing, and Composability
As mentioned, everything on Sui is represented as an object. Token balances, NFTs, user accounts, and smart contracts are all objects on Sui. There are a few different types of objects, with the two primary being “owned objects” and “shared objects.”
Owned Objects
An owned object has a single owner, which can be a user account or even another object. Examples of owned objects include token balances and NFTs.
Shared Objects
A shared object is one without a specified owner and can be interacted with by many users. Examples of shared objects are liquidity pools and NFT minting contracts.
Transactions involving owned versus shared objects are processed differently. Transactions related to shared objects undergo sequencing and consensus processes. However, transactions only involving owned objects have the unique capability to bypass the consensus mechanism on Sui, resulting in significantly faster finalization times, approximately 400 milliseconds, making Sui one of the fastest blockchains.
Sui's object-centric design fosters powerful composability without the need to adapt assets for compatibility across applications. Newly created object types are universally recognized across the network, enabling customization to users' needs. Smart contracts effortlessly recognize different object types, facilitating composability for unique applications and superior user experiences. For instance, diverse DeFi building blocks can be combined in a series of transactions to craft innovative DeFi strategies.
Move on Sui
As a purpose-built smart contract programming language, Move offers significant advantages in security and productivity. Specifically designed to improve upon shortcomings in other programming languages, Move addresses two key challenges: representation of digital assets and safe operations over them.
Pairing Move with Sui’s object-centric architecture, Move on Sui offers straightforward and powerful representations of digital assets through objects. This design gives rise to desirable properties that enhance asset ownership, object composability, and developer experience, all while offering an efficient execution mechanism.
Move on Sui improves upon the core language, offering win-win abstractions that give programmers more expressiveness while offering unmatched security. Sui’s implementation of Move makes many common bugs observed in traditional smart contract programming languages impossible. Simplifying smart contract development for developers, Move on Sui broadens access and functionality within DeFi, gaming, commerce, and other domains.
An example of this powerful object-centric design could be an in-game item, like a race car, which can own other objects such as its engine. The race car’s engine can be changed or modified seamlessly, and all of this can be fully represented on-chain.
**Note: the term Sui Move, as used in some videos, is being depreciated. Instead, the term Move on Sui is used when referring to the Sui-specific implementation of Move.
Focus on User Experience
Interacting with traditional blockchain platforms often comes with an expectation of sacrificing user experience to harness the benefits of blockchain technology. Sui, however, diverges from this paradigm and seeks to deliver the user experience of the traditional web while retaining the advantages of blockchain technology.
This involves eliminating obstacles related to wallets, gas fees, complex transaction approvals, and more. Sui's object-centric design and secure programming language inherently support this approach. Additionally, Sui goes a step further by providing tools that empower developers to create powerful user experiences effortlessly. These tools are integrated directly into the blockchain, with the top three being zkLogin, sponsored transactions, and programmable transaction blocks.
zkLogin
Blockchain wallet management has historically been burdensome for users. While some individuals may prefer to manage their wallets and secure their seed phrases, achieving broader blockchain adoption demands an alternative for those who are unwilling to take on this responsibility. Sui's zkLogin serves as this alternative by facilitating the creation and management of a Sui account using a familiar web credential, like a Google or Facebook account. Leveraging zero-knowledge proofs to safeguard user privacy, zkLogin enables users to seamlessly engage with blockchain applications without the typical hassle of wallet creation and management.
Sponsored transactions
Blockchain gas fees can be unfamiliar and act as a barrier for new users joining blockchain applications. Sui addresses this challenge with sponsored transactions, eliminating onboarding friction associated with gas fees. Applications have the flexibility to subsidize specific user transactions, effectively abstracting gas fees away from the end-user experience.
Programmable transaction blocks
If you’ve interacted with other blockchains before, you may have noticed that oftentimes, multiple transactions need to be submitted for a simple action, such as a trade. Users may need to wrap a token, approve the application usage, and finally submit the trade. This complicated sequence of transactions just for a simple trade creates a barrier to the practical usability of the platform.
Sui introduces programmable transaction blocks, enabling the bundling, signing, and submission of a series of complex transactions in a unified process. This not only streamlines the user experience for basic operations but also facilitates intricate chains of transactions involving different applications. Programmable transaction blocks serve as a powerful tool to foster seamless composability, ultimately enhancing the overall experience for end-users.
Details About the SUI Token
The SUI token has a capped total supply of ten billion tokens and serves primarily to secure the network, acting as both a unit of account and a means of payment within the Sui network.
The SUI token currently serves three primary purposes on Sui:
Proof-of-stake participation
Sui uses a delegated proof-of-stake mechanism to select, incentivize, and reward honest behavior by Sui validators and the SUI token owners that stake with them.
Gas fee payments
SUI tokens are used to pay for gas fees required to execute transactions and store data on-chain.
Versatile asset
SUI is a versatile and liquid asset that can be used for various applications within Sui’s ecosystem, such as decentralized exchanges, lending and borrowing applications, games, and much more.
Governance
The SUI token will play a crucial role in future governance of Sui by granting holders the right to participate in on-chain voting on important issues, such as protocol upgrades and changes to the platform.
Additionally, the Sui storage fund plays a crucial role in redistributing stake rewards over time and compensating future validators for the storage costs associated with previously stored on-chain data. This tokenomic design establishes a mechanism that allows users to store data on-chain indefinitely while ensuring fair compensation for both current and future validators, thereby ensuring the long-term sustainability of the network.
Sui DeFi
As of its launch in May 2023, the Sui Mainnet has witnessed the release of numerous applications, garnering increased attention from developers across various ecosystems. Here are a few examples of DeFi projects within the Sui ecosystem:
NAVI - borrow and lending protocol on Sui, enabling users to participate as liquidity providers and borrowers with powerful features such as automatic leverage vaults.
Cetus - a decentralized exchange and concentrated liquidity protocol built on the Sui utilizing a flexible underlying liquidity network to make trading easier for any user.
Scallop - borrow and lending protocol and decentralized exchange on a unified platform that offers an SDK for professional traders.
Turbos - concentrated liquidity, hyper-efficient decentralized exchange allowing users to trade assets at great prices and earn rewards by providing liquidity.
Kriya - a vertically-integrated range of DeFi products meant to aggregate liquidity, enhance capital efficiency, and offer tools specifically for institutions and whales.
Aftermath - an all-in-one platform for trading, liquid staking, and earning yield that is fast, inexpensive, and fully transparent.
BlueFin - decentralized derivatives exchange that offers high performance, low costs, and a Web2-like user experience.
Typus - combines swap, lending, and derivatives protocols to create an options marketplace for long-tail assets.
FlowX - a platform offering various DeFi services, such as token swapping, liquidity contribution, yield farming, and IDO campaigns.
Closing Thoughts
Built from the ground up to meet the requirements of 8 billion people, Sui incorporates unique and powerful technologies. Sui caters to all application verticals, aiming to provide optimal technology and user experience for diverse uses. The innovations introduced by Sui redefine digital asset ownership, presenting a more decentralized vision for the internet characterized by individual ownership.