An Overview of Sui, What is Sui blockchain and SUI token?

Sui is a Layer 1 blockchain developed by Mysten Labs, a company founded in 2021 by former senior engineers from Facebook’s (now Meta's) crypto project, Diem. Sui was officially launched on May 3, 2023.

The blockchain was created to solve key issues in traditional blockchain systems, like scalability, transaction speed, and high fees. It introduced a few major innovations:

For programming language, Sui uses Move, a smart contract language initially developed for Diem. It’s known for strong safety features and flexibility.

Object-Centric Model is another key innovation. Instead of treating everything as a record in a ledger (like Bitcoin or Ethereum), Sui treats assets as independent objects that can be owned, transferred, and modified. This allows for parallel transaction execution, massively boosting speed.

For scalability, Sui is architected for horizontal scaling, theoretically allowing unlimited transaction processing as demand grows.

Sui comes with parallel transaction processing, Sui can process transactions in parallel, enabling extremely high throughput in theory up to 297,000 transactions per second-outpacing many competitors like Solana. In practice, Sui can process 120,000 transactions per second. 

For performance, Sui finalize a transaction in as little as 400 milliseconds. Sui has time to finality of 0.4 second.

Sui supports instant finality. In Sui, simple transactions (like sending tokens) don't need full consensus; they can be completed almost instantly, making it extremely fast for basic use cases.

Delegated Proof-of-Stake (dPoS), Sui uses a delegated proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, allowing validators to be selected by token holders for transaction verification.

Highlights of its journey:

• 2021: Mysten Labs founded.
• Late 2021/Early 2022: Public introduction of Sui concept.
• 2022: Series A and Series B funding rounds (over $300M raised, including investments from a16z, FTX Ventures, Binance Labs, and others).
• May 2023: Sui Mainnet officially launched.
• 2023–Present: Rapid ecosystem growth — DeFi, NFTs, gaming projects built on Sui.

Use Cases

Sui supports a wide range of decentralized applications (dApps), including DeFi, NFTs, gaming, and social networking.

Its architecture is particularly suited for applications requiring fast, low-latency transactions and true digital asset ownership.

SUI Token

The SUI token is the native utility token of the Sui blockchain, with a capped total supply of 10 billion tokens.

Main Functions

• Gas Fees: SUI is used to pay transaction and operation fees on the network.
• Staking: Token holders can stake SUI to participate in the network’s proof-of-stake consensus, either as validators or delegators, helping secure the blockchain and earning rewards.
• Governance: SUI holders can participate in on-chain governance, voting on proposals that shape the future of the Sui network.
• Network Utility: SUI is essential for executing smart contracts, interacting with dApps, and accessing various network functionalities.

Token Distribution

At launch, a portion of SUI tokens was made available, with the remainder distributed over time as staking rewards and for ecosystem development. The tokenomics are designed to incentivize long-term participation and growth.

Summary Table

What unique about Sui is it uses Move because it’s purpose-built for digital assets, extremely safe, and optimized for high performance. All things that help Sui achieve its goal of fast, secure, and scalable blockchain apps.

Sui stands out for its speed, scalability, and innovative architecture, while the SUI token is central to network operation, security, and governance.