The Sui blockchain is still under test and therefore needs more time. However, it has already managed to capture the interest of not only serious investors but also ordinary users of digital coins. As with Aptos, it is based on the achievements of the self-titled Diem project of Meta and aims at tackling issues of such distribution – scaling, security, and distribution. We accumulated all the available house regarding Sui to level it against its competing product and crystallize whether the assertions of the creators were seen in practice.
What is Sui?
The Sui blockchain is built as an efficient layer one solution for high scalability dapps. The functioning and security of the network is ensured on the basis of Proof-of-Stake mechanism.
Mysten Labs is the parent company that is presently working on this project. In 2021 a group of LinkedIn ex-employees Dawn Song – a former research professor, Evan Cheng – a former head of Novi Research and other cohorts founded Novi Labs. Evan Cheng, the co-founder and CEO of Mysten Labs was previously director of R&D at Novi Research.
As of now, December 2021, Mysten Labs has more than 336 million dollars from two funding rounds. Major contributors for the project include Binance Labs, Franklin Templeton and a16z crypto.
How Sui blockchain works
Programming language
Sui blockchain uses its own programming language – a modified version of Move developed for Diem. However, the blockchain works with Move code from other systems as well, except for keys and global storage operators.
Among the main differences between the original and modified versions of Move are the following:
- Sui uses its own object-oriented global storage
- Objects have globally unique identifiers
- Sui’s entry points take references to objects as input
- Addresses are object identifiers
- Sui has module initializers
- Developers use the automated Move Prover tool to verify smart contracts written in Move.
Parallel Transaction Execution
In most blockchains, transactions are executed sequentially. This prevents competition between transactions and duplication of effort, but it also limits bandwidth.
Parallel transaction execution allows Sui to process up to 120,000 transactions per second on a MacBook Pro. In comparison, Ethereum can process 7-15 transactions per second and Visa can process up to 24,000 transactions per second.
Many transactions do not have complex interdependencies with other arbitrary parts of the blockchain state – in fact, in most cases, users simply want to send an asset to the recipient. Consensus mechanisms reduce the amount of communication between validators needed to process transactions. As a result, simple transfers are confirmed almost instantly, and complex transfers are executed within 2-3 seconds.
Sui Consensus Mechanism
The consensus search between validators consists of two components, Narwhal and Bullshark, which share responsibilities in the network.
- Narwhal is a high throughput mempool. It is responsible for the synchronization and availability of the data presented to the validators.
- Bullshark is a consensus protocol based on a combination of Directed Acyclic Graph and Byzantine Generals. Its main feature is that it allows consensus to be achieved without the need to exchange information between validators.
This mechanism not only gives the blockchain high performance, but also makes it more resilient to failures.
Sui Token and Project Tokenomics
The launch dates of the native blockchain coin are not yet known. However, the project team has already released details of the Tokenomics project. The maximum supply will be 10 billion, with only a portion of the coins going into circulation at the launch of the main Sui network. A significant portion will go to the Sui Foundation and the remainder will be distributed to Mysten Labs employees, investors, validators and the community.
The SUI token will be used to
- Pay transaction fees
- Participate in blockchain governance through on-chain voting
- Payments to validators
- Delegate to validators via stacking
In the future, the project team may hold an airdrop SUI – a marketing campaign where market participants receive free cryptocurrency. Such events provide projects with community attention and network traffic, and serve as a stress test for the network. After the successful Aptos airdrop, Sui creators will certainly want to take advantage of this opportunity.
Project Ecosystem.
Mysten Labs has already launched a basic infrastructure for interacting with the testnet – in particular, the Sui Explorer blockchain browser and the Sui Wallet, available as a Google Chrome extension. It can be used to create a new address or restore an existing one, manage assets, and interact with decentralized applications (dApps).
Third-party teams are also developing Sui-based projects. Notable among them are
- Decentralized exchanges – Suiswap and MovEx
- DeFi platforms – Cetus, Porto Labs, Kxfinance.
- Sui Name Service
- Sui Art and Sui Gallery NFT Marketplaces
- NFT Collections Sui Punks, Sui Birds, Sui Droplets
Comparing Sui and Aptos
Aptos and Sui have a lot in common: they use the Move programming language, their founders came from Meta, and the same companies invested in them.
But the projects also have important differences:
- Aptos uses Move’s global repository, while Sui uses its own object-oriented repository.
- A modified version of Sui Move makes it clear when an object is owned and shared, whether it can be modified, etc.
- Sui’s ownership API is cleaner than Aptos’ because it more clearly represents the blockchain design.
- According to the project team, Sui processes 120,000 transactions per second. Aptos can handle up to 160,000 transactions.
- Sui uses the Narwhal memepool and Bullshark consensus protocol to execute transactions in parallel. Aptos implements parallelization by dynamically discovering dependencies and scheduling execution tasks using BlockSTM
- Aptos prioritizes heterogeneous validators (limited CPU and/or limited memory), while Sui solves the state growth problem through efficient memory partitioning and horizontal scaling of resources.
Although Aptos has already launched a core network and is several steps ahead of its competitor, Sui’s unconventional approach to blockchain with its object-oriented architecture provides a new perspective on the problems of the Layer1 space. Therefore, at this stage, it is difficult to predict which project will perform better in the long run. Furthermore, it is important to remember that both are still in their infancy, and any initial advantages may disappear in a few months.
Project outlook
The future of Sui looks very promising: its technical features and the development team’s approach seem to have appealed to many in the crypto community.
In the last months of the bear market, we have seen a shift towards DeFi protocols, dApps with real-world benefits, and user-centric games as opposed to P2E. Sui could be the perfect platform for this: thanks to the network architecture, simple transactions will be performed in near real-time, and the ability to scale horizontally will keep fees low.
However, the project will have to withstand stiff competition from other L1 blockchains and continue to improve the ecosystem if it is to gain traction.
