$SUI: What You Need to Know
Sui vs Aptos & Advantages of Move
SUI is showing strength, up 2x in the past month and 50%+ in the past week.
Even with $ETH recently rearing it’s head and L2s receiving more attention, hyper-scalable chains like $SUI, it’s fellow MOVE chain aptos, $SEI, and others are performing well.
It’s been a while since Sui launched in May of last year; in this edition we’ll be giving insights from the Sui Co-Founders themselves on what makes their chain technically sound, how it stacks up against Aptos, future plans, and more.
Stay alert, stay informed ⬇
Sui’s Origin Story
Sam Blackshear, Co-Founder of Sui, says that he started working on Sui in November 2021, which coincided with the peak of the last bull market.
While it may seem like a logical time to start a new blockchain project due to market hype, there were other factors at play.
The decision to start Sui was not solely driven by market conditions but rather by identifying gaps in the market and seeing opportunities for improvement.
Both Co-Founders in Sam and Evan Cheng have been part of Facebook's Libra team since 2018.
They worked on building a global blockchain-powered compliant payments network as part of their roles on the team.
Sam was responsible for creating the Move language, leading its design and implementation within Libra.
Evan was part of a research team focused on various aspects of Libra's design and implementation.
During their work on Libra, they encountered limitations that prompted them to explore ways to improve upon existing solutions.
They developed a playbook for a next-generation version of Libra, including advanced consensus mechanisms, enhanced smart contract programming, and additional cryptographic primitives.
Despite their technical progress, the release of Libra faced challenges unrelated to the technology itself.
Evan says that they recognized that many people needed what they aimed to build and decided to take a shot at creating their own blockchain project.
The technical playbook they developed for the next-generation version of Libra became the foundation for Sui.
Evan’s background was in building developer platforms and products rather than focusing solely on research.
He wanted to go beyond just building a blockchain and create an actual developer platform for products.
The timing aligned well as Libra was winding down, providing an opportunity for him to pursue his own venture.
Move: A New Programming Paradigm
Sam says that initially, there was no mandate to create a new programming language when he joined the Libra project.
However, he was given freedom to explore existing options or develop something from scratch for smart contracts on Libra.
He says he spent several months studying solidity and EVM carefully before making design choices for Move language.
Sam says that smart contract languages should be more like domain-specific languages (DSL) rather than general-purpose programming languages.
These languages focus on specific tasks such as creating objects, transferring and sharing them, and performing access control checks.
The core abstractions of smart contract programming should revolve around these tasks to ensure safety and efficiency.
Instead of trying to adapt existing technologies like EVM or Solidity, the Sui team decided to design a new language called Move.
Move started with B code and incorporated features such as memory safety, type safety, resource safety, and ergonomic handling of objects/assets.
The development process involved implementing example code for Libra and comparing it with Solidity code to evaluate their respective advantages.
Sam says that the focus is on developer acquisition by providing compelling incentives for developers to build using Move.
The Total Addressable Market (TAM) is estimated based on the number of wallet installs in crypto (approximately 60 million).
Overcoming barriers such as complex key management, wallet installations, and acquiring native tokens are crucial for attracting developers.
The team aims to turn these challenges into technical problems by offering features like ZK login that allows transactions without installing a wallet.
Sponsor transactions enable others to pay for transaction fees, allowing developers to explore traditional revenue models.
Evan says that when pitching to web3 native developers, the focus is on the merits of the language and overall platform.
It is important to emphasize that a blockchain system should be designed cohesively with its chosen language.
For larger product builders, understanding their specific problems and providing solutions is crucial.
He believes that using a popular language like Rust does not automatically attract the entire developer community associated with that language.
Rust lacks built-in features for fundamental blockchain operations like asset transfer or account management.
Libraries need to be added to provide these functionalities, making it necessary to go beyond just using the language itself.
Sui’s Beachhead: Gaming and Commerce
Evan says that the gaming industry is known for experimenting with new business models and technologies, making it an interesting sector to explore.
Blockchain's ability to handle assets aligns well with the needs of the gaming industry.
Commerce, which touches almost every consumer product, can benefit from blockchain technology.
Blockchain's core value lies in its ability to facilitate asset-related activities in commerce.
Commerce encompasses various activities, including payments, asset exchanges, and staking.
Gaming serves as an initial use case to introduce blockchain technology to the general public.
Sui vs Aptos and Looking Ahead
Sam says that the focus should be on how developers can reach the broadest possible audience.
Building on Sui offers benefits such as CK login for users without wallets and sponsored transactions for monetization without requiring tokens.
He adds that Aptos provides features like royalty enforcement for digital objects and closed-loop tokens with restricted usage.
Evan says that enshrining features in the protocol makes it easier for developers as they don't have to rely on centralized service providers or pay monthly fees.
Ethereum allows for a more free-market approach where developers have to opt-in to certain features, which may not be supported everywhere.
Enshrining critical features in the protocol is important for product builders and reduces competition for essential functionalities.
Evan says that Ethereum faces challenges with adopting new standards due to high gas fees, leading some features to be pushed off-chain or made inefficient.
In contrast, Sui aims to incorporate critical features directly into its native protocol, making them easily accessible without relying on external services.
Social consensus plays a crucial role in adopting new standards, and it can be challenging to get everyone to agree.
TVL growth of top 10 Sui protocols
Sui: A Technical Deep Dive
Evan says that many blockchains focus heavily on the complexity of underlying technology, requiring developers to consider various scaling strategies and component choices.
Sui aims to simplify this by providing a platform where scaling, performance, and gas stability are already taken care of.
Sui focuses on
Ultra-low latency
Horizontal scalability
Emphasis on solving real-world problems efficiently
Sam says that in blockchain systems, ownership is represented using a hash table.
He adds that transactions are sent by owners who can only perform certain actions based on the code.
Different types of objects can be stored in the hash table, such as NFTs or smart contracts.
Sam says that in Sui, global storage is represented by a set of objects with unique IDs. Objects have metadata embedded within them, including an owner field.
The owner can be an address, another object's ID, immutable (for smart contracts), or shared (for objects accessible by multiple users).
This model differs from account-oriented models where ownership is represented in a hash table.
Low latency is crucial for use cases like gaming or real-life transactions.
In traditional EVM systems, transactions go through consensus for ordering before execution.
Solana introduces a fast path using Byzantine Consistent Broadcast for executing transactions without full consensus.
This significantly reduces latency compared to systems that require full consensus.
Sui also aims to process a high volume of transactions.
Similar to Solana, the data model in EVM systems involves transactions operating on specific objects.
This allows for parallel execution and easy scheduling of tasks in Sui.
Gas pricing and incentive mechanisms are designed to handle sequential contention on shared state without affecting other transactions.
Sam says that Sui’s data model enables parallel execution by specifying input objects for each transaction.
Sui offers realistic finality within 25 milliseconds, providing fast confirmation for transactions.
Full finality is achieved within 400 milliseconds, ensuring the completion of all necessary processes.
End-to-end latency is around 480 milliseconds, which is significantly better than systems relying solely on full consensus.
Sam says that parallel execution enables the system to handle a high volume of transactions at once.
The goal is to avoid limiting throughput based on the capacity of a single machine or validator.
The ability to distribute execution across different workers and scale elastically is desired.
Scaling up by adding more machines during peak transaction periods and scaling down during normal traffic is important.
The object data model plays a crucial role in achieving scalability.
Validator Requirements
Currently, there are around 100 validators in the network.
Validators can apply to receive stake from the Sui Foundation, which helps with geographical distribution and data center diversity.
Over time, as more people acquire their own funds, they can start new validators and compete with existing ones.
The size of the validator set is not seen as the ultimate metric for decentralization; instead, focus is placed on cost efficiency for users, or how much it costs users to replicate transactions that affect their state.
Sui utilizes an object data model to implement "sparse nodes," allowing users to validate only the transactions that touch their objects efficiently.
Sam says that as transaction volumes increase, running a full node or validator becomes impractical for regular users.
By collectively tracking changes to objects, users can ensure validators adhere to the protocol.
Sam says that approximately 19% of transactions in Sui take the fast path.
Fast path transactions involve simple transfers like sending USDC to another account.
Interactions with smart contracts like Uniswap on Ethereum do not qualify as fast path transactions due to multiple parties involved.
Move’s Security Benefits
Sam says that Move's security is not solely based on the absence of hacks so far.
No smart contract language can prevent programmers from writing unsafe code.
He adds that Move addresses issues with existing languages such as re-entrancy, dynamic dispatch, ownership checks, and object serialization.
Move aims to eliminate these problems and provide a more secure environment for developers.
Sam says that the key value proposition of Move is its typed objects and type safety.
Type safety applies not only within your program but also when interacting with external code or untrusted sources.
Integrating Move into other systems may require considerations for account base systems, the interaction between move and non-move programs, and running verifiers to ensure security guarantees.
Integrating Move into another ecosystem may require addressing account-based systems and interaction between move and non-move programs.
Adding a compiler may introduce risks, but the key value proposition of Move lies in its typed objects and type safety.
Evan says that to fully leverage the security benefits of Move, it is crucial for all smart contracts within a system to use Move consistently.
Running verifiers and ensuring strong assumptions on code and objects can be achieved when all contracts are written in Move.
He adds that having a blockchain alone is not enough; it needs to be compatible with different languages to replicate the same stack.
Replicating the entire stack is crucial for reaping all the benefits of blockchain technology.
Economic Security
Sam says that economic security is evaluated based on how much stake one would need to acquire to cause undesired outcomes in the system.
Starting from scratch, new systems implement stake subsidies to ensure sufficient stake exists initially.
Currently, there are around 8 billion stakes staked out of a total supply of approximately 10 billion tokens, indicating good economic security.
Evan says that economic security attacks on blockchains are rare, especially during the early stages when ecosystem growth makes such attacks expensive.
Sam says that while economic security is an important aspect, social consensus acts as the ultimate protection against attacks that could harm the network's reputation.
Atomic Composability, Scalability & Validator Sustainability
Sam says that the utility of a smart contract platform can be measured by multiplying valuable assets on the platform with the programmability of those assets.
Atomic composability plays a crucial role in programmability, allowing developers to access all assets and build applications without worrying about implementation details or different latencies.
The vision is to put everything valuable in one place, providing a programming model that allows automatic access to all assets without barriers.
Fragmenting state across multiple layers or subchains may create UX issues but is seen as an acceptable trade-off for achieving atomic composability.
He adds that the future of crypto is envisioned as having different kinds of rollups, similar to how there are new websites for various purposes.
Atomic composability is considered critical for blockchains because it enables easy access to all valuable assets and promotes seamless interaction between users and applications.
It eliminates the need for users to be aware of implementation details or differences in security models across assets.
Sam says that scaling layer-1 to fit everything on the same layer is crucial for expanding use cases.
If there's a bottleneck that requires a fragmenting state or degrading user experience, it may be necessary to explore alternative solutions.
He adds that pushing technical limits determines how big and impactful a layer-1 can be.
More throughput and scalability at the base layer are beneficial before considering fragmentation or bridging.
Sam says that building a network with a large user base and consumer-grade experience may require higher hardware requirements.
Each community must decide the value of accessibility versus lower barriers for running nodes.
Evan says that Ethereum's user experience is not seamless for consumer applications due to scalability limitations.
Staking on newer chains like Solana is relatively painless compared to Ethereum.
He adds that the role of service providers in running nodes raises questions about centralization.
Determining the true Nakamoto ratio and whether services count as single or multiple validators is debated.
Evan says that balancing hardware requirements, accessibility, and sustainability is an ongoing challenge.
The pace of hardware advancements relative to blockchain demand affects long-term sustainability.
He adds that there are very few blockchain solutions that are approachable by consumers.
Limiting oneself to solutions that are not consumer-friendly can hinder the potential value that can be achieved.
Sam says that decentralization does not mean that anyone can run their own node; it is not a practical reality.
The cost of running a node may be higher than the income generated from staking rewards or transaction fees.
Other factors, such as income from running a node and access to faster reads through RPC providers, need to be considered when evaluating the value of running a node.
He adds that running a node can have benefits beyond direct financial gains, such as offsetting costs through other income sources.
Nodes also serve as RPC providers, offering faster reads to users.
Some individuals run nodes for security reasons or as part of their side business, which further contributes to the ecosystem's growth.
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Intriguing to hear the motivations behind the Sui's design philosophy. How coding should "flow" more in tune with the practical use case requirements of dapps.