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Sui is a Layer 1 blockchain designed to facilitate the adoption of web 3 through increased speed and security while lowering costs.

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One of the hottest upcoming entries into the crypto sector is the Sui blockchain and its associated token, SUI. Despite the initial testnet not being available and no release date announced for the SUI token 

, it’s one of the most highly anticipated crypto-related releases in a long time. If you haven't heard about it until now, don't worry! We'll explain everything you need to know about this exciting new technology.

 blockchain designed to solve some of the problems around 

 Its primary focus areas are reducing latency in the time it takes to execute smart contracts, and revolutionizing blockchain technology by increasing speed and security as the blockchain landscape moves toward greater adoption of web3.

Sui is also the future home of exciting new blockchain 

. The idea is that developers can fully unleash their creativity in making games fun and exciting without focusing too much on the coding aspect. 

, whose 13-member team is led by five founders — Evan Cheng, Sam Blackshear, Adeniyi Abiodun, George Danezis and Kostas Chalkias — who are former senior executives and lead architects for Meta's discontinued digital wallet program called Novi. They decided to launch a new blockchain protocol aimed at defeating the issues of scalability that have been the thorn in the crypto sector's side for years.

The Sui blockchain has three core elements that work together to allow it to process instant settlements at a low cost: Move language, parallel transaction execution and the Sui Consensus Engine.

, which is an updated version of the Move language that 

 uses. Move is a programming language based on the popular 

 language, originally designed by Facebook (now known as Meta) for its now-discontinued blockchain program, Diem. 

Sui's Move is an executable bytecode language designed to prevent double-spending and help Sui become one of the safest and most secure smart contract platforms. Overall, it was designed to improve some of the flaws — or at least imperfections — of existing programming languages like Solidity, which weren’t coded to support blockchain asset representations securely. 

While traditional blockchain networks have their smart contracts designed around accounts, Sui's smart contracts are designed around programmable objects. These objects can be mutable or immutable, shared among multiple people or owned by one person. Objects owned strictly by a single user won't have to undergo the verification process, allowing them to have near-instant finality.

One of the biggest innovations that Sui offers is parallel transaction execution. On other platforms that process smart contracts, transactions are executed one at a time, generally in the order in which they’re received. This causes individual transactions to take longer to process. 

However, the Sui blockchain processes transactions in parallel, and simple transactions aren’t required to undergo consensus, resulting in near-instant finality. For the sake of comparison, at its peak, the Ethereum blockchain can handle about 15 

 (TPS). In trial runs, the Sui network was able to process 120,000 transactions in a single second. 

 used by Sui, although Bullshark replaced Tusk as the primary option in August 2022. The move was made to reduce 

 issues, and to ensure that validators with lower processing speeds would still be able to contribute to the project. Tusk can still be used via updating the source, however. 

 to ensure that the data submitted to the consensus is available, and Bullshark (or Tusk) then sets the standard for arranging that data so the consensus engine can read it. This is part of the 

 (DAG) mempool, which is yet another innovation Sui offers.

 (DPoS) system, which means that within each epoch (a period of 24 hours), SUI holders select a set of validators and stake their SUI tokens with them. These validators process the transactions in the network. The staked tokens are locked into the system during that specific epoch, but token holders can pull out their tokens or change their delegated validator when the epoch changes.

The Sui network's gas price system was designed with three distinct goals, all of which are intended to enhance the user experience and ensure a fast, reliable network:

 At the beginning of each epoch, the validators are surveyed to see the minimum gas price they'll accept. The system then orders these amounts, and chooses a price roughly around the 66th percentile. During the epoch, each validator receives signals regarding other validators' operations, which allows them to assess their performance against the rest, and aim to commit to the reference gas price. At the end of each epoch, validators who have performed efficiently against the reference gas price will receive regular rewards, while those who haven’t will have their rewards slashed. 

This system encourages validators to enter a lower minimum acceptable gas price and commit to it, which helps keep users' costs down. 

An essential part of the sustainability aspect of Sui blockchain is the storage fund, which is designed to hold the network's gas fees and redistribute them to validators in the future. This ensures that the network can continue to operate, as validators will have a vested interest in continuing their work.

The storage fund size is maintained by ensuring that storage outflows will always be less than storage inflows. There are two types of inflows: the storage fees for transactions conducted in the current epoch, and the reinvestments of the staked rewards not paid out to validators into new principal. The outflow is created when users delete unnecessary data for a storage fee rebate.

It’s important to note that these validator rewards are only paid out of the interest generated by the fund, and the principal is never touched. This ensures that the fund and, therefore, the ecosystem will be self-sustaining and able to last indefinitely.

SUI is the native coin of the Sui blockchain. To differentiate between the blockchain layer and the coin, the name of the token, SUI, is always capitalized. SUI has several uses and benefits. First, you can use it for staking and paying gas fees for transactions on Sui’s PoS network. It can also be traded as a liquid asset. Finally, all SUI token owners can participate in the voting process of governance. 

The easiest way to store your SUI tokens is in the 

, which is a Google Chrome browser extension that allows you to create a new wallet or import an existing one for the self-custody of assets. NFTs can also be uploaded to the SUI Wallet, enabling them to be stored securely on the SUI blockchain.

Although Sui isn’t yet live, the SUI distribution 

 ahead of its impending release. The token has a hard cap of 10 billion coins, with a portion to be released at launch and the rest to be distributed incrementally over time, as decided by the 

At launch, 50% will be put in the Community Reserve for grants, validator subsidies, and research and development, 20% will be given to early contributors to the project, 14% will go to investors, 10% will be distributed to the Mysten Labs treasury, and 6% will go toward the 

As anticipation grows ahead of the SUI launch, many scammers have attempted to make announcements regarding a SUI airdrop. In a bid to stop the SUI airdrop scams, the Sui Foundation has 

 to the community that no tokens have been released and anyone offering a SUI airdrop is likely a scammer. 

 share many similarities in that both are relatively new, Level 1 blockchains, developed by former Meta employees, and use the Move programming language. But if you look at each blockchain more closely, there are also quite a few differences. 

First, Sui uses a more up-to-date version of the same programming language, and is coded more transparently. It allows users to see if an object is owned, shared, immutable, or none of the above, whereas Aptos does not. Secondly, while they both run on the same PoS mechanism, Sui uses Narwhal and Bullshark as its consensus algorithms, while Aptos uses a derivative of the 

Finally, Aptos had a slightly higher throughput in its testing phase than Sui, at 160,000 TPS. However, after Aptos' mainnet was released in October 2022, its TPS fell to a dismal rate of 4 TPS, and currently runs at 

 (as of March 17, 2023). Meanwhile, Sui's true potential remains to be seen, though its object-centric design — which facilitates parallel transactions — promises a high ceiling with theoretically unlimited TPS potential.

As web3 increases in popularity, the Sui blockchain's true potential will become fully realized after it launches its network token, SUI. Should Sui perform to its full potential, users will be able to store their digital assets and transact on a more secure web3 blockchain with unprecedented speed. With dramatically reduced transaction processing times, the overall system will become more efficient, driving mass adoption in web3 and gaming — and ultimately leading to a brighter future for the entire crypto sector and its users.

Sui Blockchain (SUI): A Fast & Cost-Efficient Layer 1 Blockchain

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