What is Sui (SUI)?

Sui is an innovative Layer-1 blockchain network characterized by its high speed and parallel processing capabilities. In other words, the Sui network is a platform designed from the ground up to improve scalability and user experience in the Web3 world. So what is SUI coin? SUI is the native cryptocurrency of this network. The Sui network uses the SUI token to execute transactions, perform smart contract interactions and secure the network. At a basic level, this is how we can answer the question “What is Sui?” - a blockchain project that stands out for its strong technical infrastructure and the native token that powers it.

The team behind Sui is made up of developers with experience from Facebook (Meta)'s failed Diem cryptocurrency venture. This team founded a company called Mysten Labs and brought Sui to life. So, what is Sui Network? The Sui network uses Move as its programming language and has an unusual architecture called the object-oriented data model. Their goal is to bring blockchain technology to the masses: Integrating Web3 applications into everyday life by offering high transaction speed, low latency and a user-friendly experience. In this guide, we'll cover all the important details, from Sui's emergence, SUI technical specifications, SUI token offering and the coin's vision, to its history. Of course, we'll get to the "What is Sui coin?" question too.

Definition and Origin of SUI

Sui is defined as a Layer-1 blockchain network capable of high-speed and parallel transactions. This means that it operates at the base blockchain layer (in the same category as platforms like Ethereum, Solana, etc.) and is designed to process a large number of transactions simultaneously. The major difference that makes this possible is that it processes data as objects, not blocks, and thus offers the ability for parallel processing. While in traditional blockchains all transactions are confirmed in sequential blocks, in Sui, transactions can be executed independently based on the cryptocurrencies they interact with. This means that unrelated transactions can take place simultaneously (in parallel), significantly increasing the efficiency of the network. As a result, Sui can theoretically reach very high transaction capacities and aims to provide users with an instant transaction experience with low latency (no delay in the confirmation speed of transactions).

Another technical foundation of Sui is that it is built on the Move programming language. So what is SUI Move language? It is a specialized language originally developed for Facebook's Diem project, designed for writing smart contracts. Because Move was developed to securely manage cryptocurrencies and permissions, it adds security and flexibility to Sui's smart contract infrastructure. In particular, some of the vulnerabilities seen in Ethereum's Solidity language (such as the smart contract vulnerability called reentrancy) are not found in Move. This is because the language design itself prevents such bugs. By adopting this security-oriented approach and object-oriented structure of the Move language, Sui network says it offers developers a more secure and easier smart contract development experience. Sam Blackshear, CTO of Mysten Labs (creator of the Move language), emphasizes that thanks to Move, smart contracts are both fault tolerant and increase developer productivity.

Sui's emergence is directly rooted in the experience of Meta (Facebook)'s cryptocurrency startup. When Meta's once-heralded Libra project (Diem) hit regulatory hurdles and failed to materialize, some of the key figures involved in the project decided to move on. Experts such as Evan Cheng, Sam Blackshear and George Danezis, who worked on Meta's Novi/Diem team, founded Mysten Labs in 2021. Using the know-how from the Diem project, the team started the Sui project with the goal of creating a new L1 network that is fully decentralized, scalable, and developer-friendly. In short, Sui was created by a team born out of Meta's Diem project to utilize the technologies developed in that project (in particular the Move language) in a broader blockchain vision. Incidentally, Sui is often compared to Aptos, another project with the same origins. Aptos is another product of the former Diem team. It also uses the Move language and launched in 2022. In Aptos vs Sui comparisons, the two networks are said to have similar underpinnings but different technical approaches. For example, Aptos organizes blockchain data around accounts, while Sui adopts an asset-oriented model and emphasizes parallel processing capability more.

History of the SUI: Key Milestones

The Sui project is a relatively new one. But in a short time it has experienced many important milestones. Below we take a look at the key developments in the Sui network's history:

• Mysten Labs was founded in 2021: When it became clear that Facebook's Diem project would be canceled, five veterans of the project (Evan Cheng, Sam Blackshear, Adeniyi Abiodun, George Danezis and Kostas Chalkias) came together to found Mysten Labs. The company's goal was to build a new blockchain infrastructure using advanced technologies developed at Diem. During this year, the Sui concept began to take shape and basic development work began.
• In 2022, the first testnet version was released: Sui's first public trials took place this year. First a Devnet (developer network) was released for developers curious about the answer to the question: What is the Sui network? Then, towards the end of the year, the Testnet phase started. In November 2022, the first testnet, called Sui Testnet Wave 1, went live and operated successfully for several weeks. During this testing period, independent validators ran Sui nodes to test the performance and stability of the network. By December 2022, the first wave of testnets was successfully completed and Sui continued to prepare for the transition to the main network. Throughout 2022, the Sui project started to arouse curiosity in the crypto community, and early adopters were able to experience what Sui coin was for on the testnet.
• In 2023, the network went live: The most critical period for Sui was 2023. In April 2023, Mysten Labs launched the Community Access Program for Sui's native token, SUI coin. While many expected Sui to do a big airdrop (free token distribution), the team instead offered early backers and testers the opportunity to purchase a certain amount of SUI tokens. Thanks to this community sale, Sui tokens entered circulation for the first time. Then, on May 3, 2023, the Sui mainnet was officially launched. With the mainnet launch, the SUI token was listed on exchanges and the Sui network was officially launched. With the production of the first blocks, Sui began to operate as a decentralized blockchain available to everyone. During this period, major exchanges added SUI to their listings and Sui coin reached a wide investor base. In the early days of Mainnet, the total supply of SUI tokens was set at 10 billion units, of which around 5% were already in circulation. So SUI token economics (SUI tokenomics) was also recognized as robust by the community.
• After the launch, the ecosystem continued to grow: With the launch of Mainnet, the first applications in the Sui ecosystem started to emerge. In particular, NFT projects, blockchain-based games and DeFi protocols started to appear on the Sui network. For example, decentralized exchanges (DEXs) and lending/borrowing finance applications running on Sui have started to gather users. NFT marketplaces also started minting the first digital collectibles on the Sui network. Sui's promises of high transaction speed and low cost provided an attractive environment for such applications to scale. By the end of 2023, transaction volume and total locked asset value (TVL) on the Sui network were on a rapid upward trend. According to some reports, Sui even increased its total locked asset value by a phenomenal 2000% in just a few months.

• What happened in 2024: 2024, the first full year of the Sui mainnet, was a year of increased network maturity and adoption. In January 2024, a major protocol update codenamed “Mysticeti” was implemented. This update further reduced transaction latency on the Sui network. For example, normal token transfers are already finalized in as little as ~0.4 seconds, while complex transactions on decentralized exchanges are reduced from 2-3 seconds to around ~1 second. This was seen as a very important improvement for real-time applications (games, payment systems). In 2024, we also collaborated with Circle to integrate the USDC stablecoin on the Sui network. Thanks to this integration, which went live in October 2024, Sui users were able to make USDC transfers directly on the network, providing a significant flow of liquidity to DeFi protocols in the Sui ecosystem. By the end of the year, Sui had entered the top 20 cryptocurrencies in terms of market capitalization and had become a rich ecosystem with over 200 dApps (decentralized applications).
• Record price in 2025: As of 2025, SUI Coin is performing remarkably well in the market. In April 2025, the SUI price is around $3.4. SUI's all-time high price was recorded at $5.35 on January 6, 2025, down about 35% from the current price. The lowest price was $0.3643 in October 2023, which represents an 848% increase since then. On the token side, about 32.5% (3.25 billion tokens) of the total 10 billion supply is in circulation. On May 1, 2025, another 88.34 million SUIs will be released, equivalent to 2.72% of the current market cap. Throughout 2025, these controlled token expansions aim to maintain price stability by stabilizing supply.

Why is SUI valuable?

For a blockchain project to be successful in the long term, it needs to be technically sound and fulfill a real need. The Sui network has a valuable position in the crypto world thanks to its innovative features and approach. So what are the technical features and advantages that make Sui so special? Also, what does Sui coin do in general?

Parallel transactions and high TPS

Just like Aptos, Sui's most valuable feature is its ability to perform parallel processing The network achieves a huge transaction capacity (TPS - Transactions Per Second) by executing unrelated transactions simultaneously. This exponentially increases the number of transactions that take place on the network in the same second. In their tests, Sui developers showed that a network of 100 validators can successfully handle tens or even hundreds of thousands of transactions per second under ideal conditions. For comparison, the Ethereum network can process around 15-30 transactions per second, while the Sui TPS is much higher. The high TPS makes Sui particularly desirable in heavy usage scenarios such as DeFi applications, popular NFT mint events or in-game microtransactions. Sui also provides low latency when managing high transaction volumes; most transactions can be finalized in under a second. This means users do not have to wait long periods of time for their transactions to be confirmed.

Blockchain	Real-Time TPS	Maximum TPS (Tested)	Theoretical Maximum TPS	Block Time	Finality Time	Consensus Mechanism
Sui	Data not available	297,000 TPS	297,000 TPS	~0.4 sec	~0.4 sec	Narwhal & Bullshark (DAG-based)
Solana	1,255 TPS	2,909 TPS	65,000 TPS	0.4 sec	12.8 sec	Proof of History + PoS
Aptos	36.45 TPS	12,933 TPS	160,000 TPS	0.13 sec	0.9 sec	AptosBFT (Move-based)
ICP	859.2 TPS	25,621 TPS	209,708 TPS	0.48 sec	0 sec	Chain Key Technology
Polygon	33.61 TPS	429.1 TPS	714.3 TPS	2.13 sec	4 min 16 sec	Proof of Stake (Layer 2)
Ethereum	14.25 TPS	62.34 TPS	119.1 TPS	12 sec	16 min	Proof of Stake

Secure and flexible smart contracts (Move language)

Smart contracts on the Sui network are written in the Move programming language. Because Move is a language designed with security in mind, smart contracts on Sui have fewer bugs and vulnerabilities. For example, the famous DAO attack on Ethereum in 2016 was caused by a reentrancy vulnerability in a contract written in Solidity. In Move, vulnerabilities like reentrancy are blocked at the language level. This ensures that smart contracts written in Sui are resistant to similar bugs. Another advantage of the Move language is its flexibility and expressiveness. Its modeling of entities and data as “objects” gives developers a more natural programming experience. Sui developers report that writing code with Move is both safer and more efficient. The combination of security and flexibility means that innovative applications can be developed quickly and run safely on the Sui network.

An asset-oriented data model instead of a block

Unlike classic blockchain architecture, Sui uses an object-oriented data model rather than a block-based one. What does this mean? In the blockchain world, transactions are usually aggregated into blocks that are created over a period of time, and each block is added to the chain sequentially. In Sui, however, the assets in the network (tokens, NFTs, records in smart contracts, etc.) are treated as objects. Each transaction makes a change to the relevant objects. If two transactions are related to completely different objects, they can be processed in parallel without waiting for each other. This object-centric architecture provides both high efficiency and a new way of thinking for developers. For example, in a gaming application, the items in one player's inventory are separate objects and not directly linked to another player's inventory, so the operations of these two players can be performed simultaneously on Sui without overlapping. The object-oriented model simplifies data management and reduces transaction costs. Various block explorers are also being developed to fit Sui's data model. Tools such as Sui Explorer allow users to track what is happening in the network on an object-based basis. This innovative approach is an important element of value that sets Sui apart from other blockchain projects.

Strong investor support

Even in its early stages, the Sui project has received major support from leading investors in the crypto world. Mysten Labs reached multi-billion dollar valuations in its funding rounds in 2021 and 2022. In particular, leading venture capital firms such as Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Binance Labs and Coinbase Ventures invested in Sui early on. For example, in the Series B investment round in 2022, Mysten Labs raised 300 million dollars in funding, and this round included many big names as well as the above investors. The presence of such reputable and powerful investors is a sign of confidence in the Sui project. The investor support not only provided financial resources, but also helped Sui to gain widespread publicity and be listed on major exchanges in a short period of time. As a result, Sui has a strong support mechanism behind it, both in terms of financial strength and industry connections. This is an important advantage for the project to realize its long-term vision.

Developer-friendly and open source approach

The success of a blockchain platform depends on the wealth of applications built on it and the size of its developer community. Sui was developed as an open-source project from the very beginning. Sui's code is open to developers on GitHub, allowing developers around the world to contribute to Sui's infrastructure, report and fix bugs, or integrate it into their own projects. Mysten Labs also offers a comprehensive developer toolkit for Sui: For example, Sui SDKs, APIs, libraries and detailed documentation make it easy to develop new projects on Sui. An example of the developer-friendly approach is Sui's initiatives such as Sui Developer Portal and Sui University. These platforms provide training materials, sample projects and technical support. Since Move is a relatively easy and safe language to learn, developers from different platforms can adapt to Sui. As a result, the Sui ecosystem is becoming vibrant and productive in terms of developers. Among Web3 infrastructure projects, Sui stands out thanks to this open and embracing environment. This encourages the emergence of new applications, NFT collections and DeFi protocols on the Sui network every day.

Who is the Founder of SUI?

So, who is the founder of Sui? Behind Sui is a company called Mysten Labs and its founding team. Mysten Labs was founded in 2021, and the common feature of the team is that they come from the Diem project within Meta (Facebook). This means that Sui's developers are experienced engineers who previously worked on Facebook's cryptocurrency and blockchain initiative.

Evan Cheng is one of the most prominent members of Mysten Labs' founding team. Evan Cheng is the CEO of Mysten Labs and was the director of Novi Research (Facebook's financial technologies R&D unit) at Facebook. Cheng also has an engineering background, having worked at Apple for many years. “With Sui, we're trying to build a blockchain that scales on demand and provides users with a disintermediated experience,” said Evan Cheng, who takes on the visionary leadership role in the Sui project.

Another critical member of the founding team is Sam Blackshear. Blackshear is the chief technical officer (CTO) of Mysten Labs and is known as the creator of the Move programming language. Sam Blackshear, who developed the smart contract language within the Diem project at Facebook, is also the head of the technical architecture at Sui. Blackshear played a major role in integrating the security and efficiency benefits of Move into Sui. His academic background and expertise in program analysis are critical to the project.

Another co-founder of the team, George Danezis, is an expert in cryptography and distributed systems. Danezis is a cryptographer who worked as a principal researcher on Meta's Novi team and before that was a lecturer at University College London. In the Sui project, topics such as security protocols, consensus algorithms (e.g. the Narwhal & Bullshark DAG-based consensus mechanism used by Sui) were handled by George Danezis and his team.

In addition, Mysten Labs' founding team includes Adeniyi Abiodun (product and strategy expert) and Kostas Chalkias (cryptography engineer). All of them decided to use their experience from Facebook's Diem project to create a more open and decentralized platform. The decentralized vision - the goal of building a blockchain network where the community, not a single company, is in control - is the core philosophy that differentiates Sui from Diem. While developing Sui, the Mysten Labs team also created a community-driven governance structure with the Sui Foundation.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

We've briefly answered the main questions you might have about the Sui network below. Let's take a quick look:

• What is SUI and what technology does it use? SUI is the native token of the Sui network, a high-speed and scalable Layer 1 blockchain. The network uses the Move programming language for parallel processing architecture and secure smart contracts. Transactions are finalized almost instantly thanks to the Narwhal & Bullshark consensus mechanism.
• When was the SUI network founded? When did Sui coin launch? The foundations of the Sui network were laid in 2021. In 2022, the testnet process began, and on May 3, 2023, the Sui mainnet was officially launched. As of 2025, Sui has been active for nearly two years.
• Who is the team behind SUI: Sui was developed by Mysten Labs. The team includes Evan Cheng (CEO), Sam Blackshear (CTO) and George Danezis, who worked on Meta's Diem project. There's a lot of experience from big tech companies in the background.
• What is the Move language and why is it important? Move is a specialized programming language for writing secure and flexible smart contracts. It makes cryptocurrency management secure and prevents common errors such as reentrancy. It is used as a standard language in projects like Sui and Aptos.
• How to buy SUI tokens and where to store them: SUI can be purchased on major exchanges such as Binance, Coinbase, Kraken. For storage, Sui-supported wallets such as Sui Wallet, Trust Wallet or Ledger should be preferred. Tokens can also be staked to generate passive income.
• Which applications does the SUI network support? The Sui network supports Web3 applications such as DeFi, NFT, blockchain games and DAOs. It has become the preferred choice of developers due to its low fees and high speed. As of 2025, there are hundreds of dApps and millions of NFTs on Sui.

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