Written by: Daniel Li, CoinVoice
Layer1 blockchain Sui announced that its mainnet will be launched in the second quarter of this year and launched a series of educational activities and content called "Wave to Mainnet", aiming to let the community understand the potential of the Sui protocol before the mainnet goes online. Sui and Layer 1 leader Aptos both belong to the Meta public chain. They were founded almost at the same time in terms of project establishment time. Compared with Aptos, Sui focuses more on the innovation of underlying technology, and its goal is to become the first Internet-scale programmable area. Blockchain platform. Although Sui is far inferior to Aptos in terms of development momentum, projects driven by technological innovation often have the potential to develop over time. Sui has accumulated rich technical advantages in the past few years. With the upcoming release of Sui's mainnet, I believe that Sui will soon There will be a wave of development climax.
Sui works quietly and Aptos stands in the spotlight
Aptos has inherited the nearly three years of open source technology and development experience of the Die project, and can quickly build the underlying architecture and layout of ecological projects. In contrast, Sui chose to build the Layer1 network from scratch, causing it to lag far behind Aptos in the development process. Therefore, in terms of attracting capital and investor attention in the early stage, the rapidly developing Aptos can attract more investors than Sui, which is still building the underlying architecture. Secondly, as Layer1 public chains, both are committed to improving the security and scalability of blockchains and building a high-performance blockchain infrastructure network for billions of people. However, there are certain differences in their strategies or priorities in achieving their goals.
Aptos focuses on marketing. Aptos is packaged as a unique product created by the best developers in the IT industry. Although it is exaggerated, it is effective. In the past, Aptos attracted a large number of investors with the title of Layer1 leader. In Q4 last year, the main network was launched and the coin was issued. Although the price has shrunk by more than 76%, it has performed very strongly since the beginning of the year. It has recently adjusted, but the total market value is still US$2.08 billion. Secondly, in terms of ecological project cooperation, Aptos focuses on cooperation with well-known companies, such as launching an acceleration plan with Google Cloud in infrastructure; in terms of games, it has reached a cooperation with South Korean 3A game studio NPIXEL; in terms of payment, it cooperates with Web3 fintech company MoonPay to integrate the ecosystem project Petra. Cooperation with well-known companies has brought huge traffic and attention to Aptos, and also promoted the rapid development of its ecological projects.
Unlike Aptos, Sui pays more attention to the innovative application of underlying technologies than marketing. For example, Sui's improved version of Move language can more clearly indicate the ownership, variability and composability of objects, making it naturally suitable for building metaverse facilities. In terms of ecological projects, since Sui's main network has not yet been launched and most projects are still in the testing phase, Sui is far less popular than Aptos. Therefore, in many cases, Aptos is like a star standing in the spotlight, while Sui is more like a cultivator who works silently in the background.
Sui and Aptos are both Layer1 public chains, and their founding teams are both from Diem, and they are both in the Move track, so there has been a competitive relationship between the two from the beginning. However, since Sui built the Layer1 network from scratch, the development process was relatively lagging, and most of the early market attention was focused on Aptos, so the competitive relationship between the two was not obvious in the beginning. It was not until recently that Sui's Wave 2 test was successfully completed and the mainnet was announced to be launched soon, which attracted the attention and vigilance of Aptos. Last month, Sui's CTO accused Aptos on Twitter of putting pressure on the Pontem team, the organizer of MOVECON (the first large-scale forum of the Move ecosystem), to cancel the Sui team's speech and even remove the Sui Foundation from the list of event organizers. This shows that Aptos has begun to regard the rising Sui as a competitor, and it also indirectly affirms Sui's market position and potential.
Compared with Aptos, Sui has obvious advantages in underlying technology
Although Sui still has many shortcomings compared to Aptos, such as ecological projects and community scale, Sui is not as good as Aptos, but Sui has been committed to the innovation and application of underlying technologies, and has accumulated rich technical advantages in the past year. From Sui-Move language to Narwhal-Tusk consensus mechanism to storage fund token economics, Sui has made major innovations at every level of blockchain projects. In this regard, Sui is unique even compared with other new Layer1 public chains such as Aptos.
Sui-Move
Both Aptos and Sui use the Move language, but there are some differences between them. Aptos basically follows the classic design ideas of the Diem white paper in design, while Sui has been upgraded and adjusted to form a unique Sui-Move language. The biggest difference from Move is that Sui adopts an object-centric model instead of an address-centric model. Therefore, on Sui, almost everything, such as tokens, smart contracts, NFTs, etc., can be represented as "objects". Each object has a series of properties, including owner address, read-write properties, transferable properties, functional properties, etc. Sui-Move clearly states the ownership, sharing, mutable or immutable characteristics of the object, while Aptos does not clearly state it. In addition, Sui's ownership API is more concise than Aptos's API because it shows the blockchain design more clearly. In terms of functionality, Sui-Move has certain advantages over the Move language in terms of security, smart contract support, programming mode flexibility, and compatibility.
Narwhal & Tusk
Sui's consensus mechanisms all minimize the communication required between validators to process transactions to achieve lower latency. Sui's consensus mechanism is divided into two parts: Narwhal and Tusk. Narwhal is a memory pool protocol that stores unconfirmed blockchain transactions and broadcasts them before the consensus protocol verifies them. The protocol is tasked with reaching consensus while maintaining data availability, and is independent of the consensus protocol and can tolerate asynchronous or intermittent failures. Tusk is an asynchronous consensus protocol responsible for transaction ordering. The protocol uses shared randomness to eliminate additional communication between nodes and allows each node to determine the total order of transactions. When combined with the Narwhal protocol, it ensures high performance in the event of failures.
In theory, there is no known upper limit to the throughput scalability of Sui's design. And in terms of security, compared to synchronous blockchains (i.e., most proof-of-work-based blockchains), Sui's security properties are able to withstand poor network conditions, network partitions, or DoS attacks on validators because it does not impose any synchronization assumptions on the network.
Developer Experience
The core feature of Aptos is seamless upgrades, which allows developers to focus on building without interfering with users. In contrast, the Sui Development Kit (SDK) provides more convenience for developers. The SDK provides open source, general and user-friendly tools, and allows developers to save a lot of time in debugging smart contracts, waiting for audits, and building basic technology stack elements. In addition, the SDK also attempts to connect other ecosystems and non-encrypted use cases, such as: the game API is directly connected to the general Layer1, rather than a side chain or a game-focused L2; "SuiEcho" guides the community by facilitating the portability of digital assets from other ecosystems to Sui; "Handshake" is a front-end tool that serves as a channel for users to distribute, receive/redeem Sui digital assets (such as payments, merchant coupons) to encrypted and non-encrypted users.
Sui Token Economics
In addition to a series of technical innovations designed to optimize the composability and scalability of the system, Sui has also implemented a unique token economics model. Unlike the token economics model of the traditional proof-of-stake chain, Sui's token economics model adds a "storage fund" function. Since the blockchain is a data structure that only increases and never decreases, as time goes by, more and more data needs to be maintained on the chain, and the cost will increase accordingly. This leads to later users using Sui having to pay higher fees than early users. The "storage fund" is basically created to solve this problem, allowing early users to pay more fees so that all users can use the network based on similar fee levels.
In addition, Sui's storage fund also pays validators in the system, or the people who actually store the blockchain data and do the work of maintaining the data. As the maintenance work increases, the payouts to validators will also increase, which will also incentivize more people to become validators in the system, and as more people become validators, the total amount of available storage space will also increase, further leading to lower gas fees for writing to the blockchain. Sui's token economics model is a typical representative of a highly scalable chain economic model, using game theory to ensure that gas fees remain relatively constant throughout the life of the blockchain.
Sui Ecosystem Project Inventory
Hybrid Liquidity Trading App MovEX
MovEX is the first AMM+ order book hybrid liquidity DEX on Sui, which combines the advantages of AMM and order book to provide everyone with a liquidity trading experience by creating a hybrid liquidity pool. Internally, MovEX has a settlement engine that distributes orders between AMM and order book, which ensures both minimal slippage for traders and fairness for liquidity providers. Liquidity providers can also provide one-sided liquidity with a custom price range, which can effectively manage impermanent loss.
MovEX supports market trading and limit order trading, two common functions on centralized trading platforms. Ordinary users can provide liquidity for the liquidity pool with a customized price range; professional traders and liquidity providers can become liquidity providers through the order book, similar to the market makers of centralized exchanges. Currently, the MovEX product is still in the testing phase, and users can experience the product by linking the application through the Sui Wallet wallet.
Sui Wallet
Sui Wallet is a browser extension that acts as a portal to the Web3 world, allowing users to connect to DApps and sign human-readable transactions from trusted DApps. It is the official wallet of the Sui blockchain, allowing users to create, import, and persistently store mnemonics and derived private keys, transfer coins and NFTs, and view owned fungible tokens and NFTs. Sui Wallet was originally developed for testing use by Sui developers and is currently the most recognized wallet on the testnet.
Decentralized trading application Suiswap
Suiswap is a DEX of the automatic market maker mechanism (AMM) on the Sui chain, which supports the exchange and trading of native assets in the Sui ecosystem. Currently, Suiswap supports users to receive test tokens, conduct transactions, or form LPs to provide liquidity for the liquidity pool. The final form of the product will not be seen until the Sui mainnet is launched.
Overcollateralized lending application Leizd Protocol
Leizd Protocol is a decentralized lending application within the Sui ecosystem that uses over-collateralization to run lending functions. The application uses decentralized USD stablecoin USDZ as an intermediate asset. Like MakerDAO on the Ethereum chain, it achieves risk control of lending products by minting stablecoins. In LeizdProtocol, borrowers can deposit crypto assets as collateral to mint USDZ, then borrow the required USDZ, convert it into stablecoins such as USDT or USDC, and return the borrowed USDZ and interest when due to withdraw the collateral assets. Depositors can also pledge crypto assets to mint USDZ in exchange for deposit interest, or convert USDZ into other crypto assets and deposit them into the deposit pool to earn interest.
It is reported that Leizd Protocol plans to deploy multiple chains on the Sui and Aptos networks, allowing users to borrow and lend assets on both chains. However, the test product of Leizd Protocol has not yet been launched, and the product is still in the concept introduction stage.
NFT Trading Platform BlueMove
BlueMove is a platform that supports NFT creation and trading, and has been successfully deployed on the Sui and Aptos networks. The platform's smart contracts use a modular system and clearly define the scope of execution through standardized signatures, allowing new features to be introduced over time without compromising security, such as collective quotations, feature quotations, and multiple cancellations.
In addition, BlueMove has issued a total of 300 million platform tokens, MOVE, of which 5% is used for airdrops, 40% is used to reward traders and collectors who actively participate in the platform, 15% is used to reward users for staking MOVE tokens, and the rest is used for financing and team development. The main utility of MOVE tokens is on-chain governance and membership rights.
Currently, users can buy or sell NFTs on BlueMove and receive MOVE rewards. In addition, users can also obtain a share of the platform's transaction fees and additional MOVE rewards by staking MOVE tokens.
Web3 blockchain games: Abyss Worlds
Abyss World is an action role-playing game developed by Metagame Industries based on Sui Layer 1 blockchain, with powerful Web3 technology and gaming experience. It aggregates Web2 and Web3 game players, allowing players to experience immersive gaming fun in the virtual world. Various characters, maps and plots in the game will be supported by Sui blockchain technology, allowing players to create a real game world. According to the roadmap, Abyss World will officially start public beta in the third quarter of this year.
In the Web3 gameplay, NFT is a key option to attract users to participate in the project early. Abyss World launched the first batch of Genesis NFT Gazer series sales on March 23. These NFTs are not just small pictures, but are bound to the rights and functions in the game: players holding NFTs can share potential income in the game, get more rare props and skins, and get the game's internal test qualification first. In addition, due to the in-depth cooperation with Mysten Labs, NFT is not only bound to Abyss World's game native token AWT, but also has the rights to bind Sui token airdrops, which can be said to be the current head project of Sui ecology.
Summarize
Sui is the first permissionless Layer1 blockchain designed from scratch, dedicated to providing a more user-friendly experience for Web3 users. However, technology can only play its value when it solves practical problems, and can only be truly successful when people are willing to pay for it. Sui has always focused on the innovation and application of underlying technologies, which has brought it rich technical advantages. With Sui's mainnet about to go online, it is time to transform these technical advantages into market competitiveness. Through the "Wave to Mainnet" series of activities, Sui is moving from behind the scenes to the front stage to show people the technical strength accumulated over the years. In the future, how will the underlying technology drive the overall DX/UX, and who will be able to attract more users and liquidity, these questions will gradually be answered over time.
