Understanding Sui: A Platform for Intelligent Assets

While decentralized technology forms the foundation for more secure and innovative software and products, its true potential can only be realized when the assets themselves are intelligent and empowered. This is Sui—a universal coordination layer for intelligent assets.

Unique Architecture and Benefits

One of the major factors that set Sui apart from other blockchains is its object-centric data model. Unlike traditional blockchain architectures that track asset ownership separately from user accounts, Sui's approach directly ties object ownership to the user account. On most blockchains, an NFT is actually stored within the smart contract it originates from. This raises questions about true asset ownership since the smart contract itself manages the ownership data. In contrast, Sui represents everything onchain as an object, each with a specified owner, removing reliance on smart contracts to manage ownership.

Paired with its powerful consensus mechanism, Mysticeti, Sui provides numerous benefits beyond asset ownership, including rapid settlement, parallel transaction processing, dynamic throughput, and consistent fees. These advantages make Sui a highly efficient platform for digital asset transactions and decentralized applications.

The Move Programming Language

The second pillar of Sui’s unique design is the Move programming language, developed by Sui Co-Founder, Sam Blackshear. Move is specifically built for digital asset management on smart contract platforms, with a strong emphasis on security. Many common bugs in traditional smart contract programming languages are not even possible when using Move. On Sui, Move has been adapted to leverage it’s unique data model and includes additional security checks, simplifying the development of smart contracts and expanding functionality.

User Experience Focus

Sui's core contributors and developer communities focus on providing a best-in-class user experience. When using traditional blockchain platforms, users often expect to sacrifice some aspects of user experience to gain the benefits of blockchain technology. Sui challenges this notion by striving to offer the seamless user experience of traditional web applications while retaining the advantages of blockchain. This involves eliminating barriers such as complex wallet setups, gas fees, and complicated transaction approvals. These improvements are made possible through native tools integrated directly into the blockchain for all developers and users to leverage.

Sui Transactions and Smart Contracts

On Sui, everything is represented as an object—token balances, NFTs, smart contracts, and even user accounts. There are two primary types of objects to be aware of: owned objects and shared objects.

• Owned Objects: These have a single owner, which can be a user account or another object, such as an NFTs or token balance.
• Shared Objects: These do not have a specified owner and can be interacted with by many users, like liquidity pools and NFT minting contracts.

Since transactions involving shared objects must be ordered, they’re required to pass Sui’s consensus processes, Mysticeti. In contrast, transactions involving only owned objects can bypass consensus and be finalized significantly faster, around 250 milliseconds, compared to 400 milliseconds for shared object transactions. This is possible because the rightful owner is already specified within the object itself, eliminating the need for validators to determine ownership. This strategy reduces latency and enables almost instant settlement of common transactions, while maintaining a robust verification process.

Sui objects have various data fields that allow for the creation of expressive assets with many possibilities. These fields can hold static data and dynamically point to other objects, enabling powerful expressivity for individual assets and their applications. For example, a transaction interacting with a shared object can request only the necessary data fields, reducing gas fees associated with large objects as only the relevant data is accessed.

Low Latency and Consistent Fees

Sui processes transactions with remarkable speed and efficiency. Transactions involving only owned objects bypass consensus, finalizing in milliseconds. This speed is coupled with the ability to execute transactions in parallel, preventing network congestion. Independent transactions can run simultaneously, ensuring that high demand from one application doesn't impact the network’s overall performance.

For example, while a series of transactions involving a single object, like a decentralized exchange's liquidity pool, must be processed sequentially, these can occur in parallel with transactions associated with another application. This design ensures that no single application can monopolize the network’s resources, providing fair transaction opportunities for all users.

Through a unique mechanism Sui maintains a consistent fee structure by adjusting fees every epoch (approximately 24 hours). Validators are incentivized to establish low gas fee requirements, while also ensuring transactions are included on a first-come, first-served basis which eliminates transaction bidding wars. During periods of high demand, such as popular NFT drops, gas fees on Sui remain consistent. For example, in December 2023, despite a tenfold increase in transaction blocks due to inscription-related transactions, gas fees did not spike. This stability ensures that the network remains usable for everyone, even under heavy load.

Transactions meeting the minimum gas requirements are included without needing additional fees. However, within a checkpoint, transactions are ordered based on the gas provided. This means that for high-demand transactions, like NFT minting, those who pay higher gas within the checkpoint will have their transactions processed first.

Sui’s robust fee dynamics prevent the network from becoming unusable during high demand, supporting the sustainable development of applications solving real-world problems.

Future Directions for Sui

A core tenet of Sui is to provide an exceptional user experience while offering the benefits of blockchain to application builders and users. To this end, Sui has introduced several primitives to help developers create seamless user experiences. One notable example is Sui’s zkLogin, which allows users to log into applications and manage a Sui address using common web accounts like Google. This reduces onboarding friction for new users, offering a secure and user-friendly way to interact with applications built on Sui. For example, leveraging zkLogin, Stashed enables users to log in with a Google account and send assets via a simple URL link. Recipients can click the link and are then prompted to log in with their Google account to claim the assets.

zkLogin is just one of the many tools available to Sui builders for creating top-tier user experiences. Sui is committed to enhancing this effort by expanding on existing tools and developing new ones to revolutionize blockchain usage.

Conclusion

Sui's emphasis on direct asset ownership, secure development through the Move programming language, and exceptional user experiences positions it as a unique platform in the industry. Sui’s pioneering development of the Move programming language further cements its position as an industry leader in advancing secure smart contract development and digital asset programming. While other chains may concentrate on specific sectors, Sui provides a versatile platform that caters to all types of applications, acting as a universal coordination layer empowered by uniquely intelligent assets.

Whether you're an experienced developer aiming to create a powerful app or a newcomer seeking a secure and incredibly user-friendly onchain experience, Sui is for you.