According to the official Twitter announcement on April 20, 2023, the public chain project Sui has been confirmed to be launched on the mainnet on May 3, and the native token SUI previously sold through cryptocurrency exchanges will also be unlocked during the mainnet launch. Regarding SUI tokens, the Sui project team has previously made it clear that SUI tokens will not be airdropped, and confirmed on April 15, 2023 that the tokens will be sold through IEO (Initial Exchange Offering).

For this IEO sale, KuCoin, Bybit and OKX have also announced that they will sell SUI. The subscription price for public sales is 1SUI=0.1 US dollars. However, the community reacted very strongly to [SUI tokens will not be airdropped]. Some netizens left messages under the tweet saying: NO AIRDROP = NO COMMUNITY (no airdrop, no community). The behavior of not using airdrops to motivate active users in the community is indeed very un-Web3, but the Sui team has also added participants who will contribute to the public chain ecology to the purchase whitelist, so that they can buy SUI at a more favorable price ($0.03). And a limit of 1,500 pieces is guaranteed.

So is SUI token worth participating in? This article will analyze the Sui public chain from a multi-dimensional perspective and give you a comprehensive interpretation of SUI token IEO information.

Sui public chain features & advantages

Sui is the world's first permissionless Layer 1 blockchain designed entirely by former Facebook developers. As a decentralized PoS blockchain, Sui's throughput and storage can be horizontally expanded, and its goal is to become the first Internet-scale programmable blockchain platform. The Sui ecosystem uses the Rust-based Move programming language and uses the same PoS consensus mechanism as Ethereum. Its main features are as follows:

  • Strong Scalability: The network is able to scale throughput horizontally because it can reach parallel agreement on causally independent transactions. They achieve this through Byzantine Braodcast, which eliminates the overhead caused by global consensus without sacrificing safety and liveness guarantees.

  • Secure smart contract language: Move is a programming language originally developed by Facebook for writing secure smart contracts. It supports shared libraries, tools, and developer communities across blockchains.

  • Ability to define complex on-chain assets: Sui’s scalability is not limited to transaction processing. Its storage is also low-cost and horizontally scalable. This enables developers to define complex assets with rich properties that exist directly on the chain, rather than introducing an indirect layer to off-chain storage to save gas fees.

  • Better Web3 user experience: The Sui team wants to make it the most accessible smart contract platform, enabling developers to create great user experiences in Web3. To welcome the next billion users, Sui will provide developers with a variety of tools to leverage the power of the Sui blockchain. The Sui Development Kit (SDK) will enable developers to build without limits.

In summary, Sui's architecture is known for its instant settlement and high throughput, rich on-chain assets and excellent Web3 experience. Its horizontally scalable throughput and storage can achieve efficient DApp development at lower costs.

Team situation

Sui's development team is Mysten Labs, whose founders include Evan Cheng, Adeniyi Abiodun, Sam Blackshear, George Danezis, and Kostas Kryptos, all of whom have participated in the Novi and Diem projects at Facebook.

The project announced in December 2021 that it had completed a $36 million Series A financing round led by a16z, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, NFX, Slow Ventures, Scribble Ventures, Samsung NEXT, Lux Capital, etc. On September 8, 2022, it received $300 million in a Series B financing round led by cryptocurrency exchange venture capital firm FTX Ventures. Other investors included Coinbase Ventures, Jump Crypto, a16z, Circle Ventures, Binance Labs, O'Leary Ventures and other investment funds and partners.

The IEO before the mainnet launch of the project has also made many netizens question whether the Sui project team is short of funds due to the collapse of FTX last year. However, some people have clarified that the Sui project team has already used up the $100 million investment in the FTX project and there is no need to worry about it.

Inventory of Sui Ecological Projects

So far, Sui Ecosystem has attracted many teams to build projects, and many early high-quality projects have received Sui grants, which are distributed in cross-chain, SocialFi, traffic, DeFi and other tracks. The following is an inventory of four projects that have received Sui project team grants:

  • SUIA: The first POAP application on Sui, it is a social dApp built on the Sui network. The project aims to create an open, powerful and community-driven social network. SUIA has made four innovations: personalized NFT recommendations, information flow based on on-chain activities, NFT-based brand clubs, and composable personal spaces. In terms of data, SUIA currently has more than 200,000 users, 50 core brands, and more than 300,000 community members. It has received funding from the Sui Foundation's Sui Grant and Sui Builder Heroes. Its next plan is to enable more social features for users, such as community games and social transactions.

  • ComingChat: ComingChat is a SocialFi product that aims to solve the problem of fragmented Web3 product experience. The product also incorporates some aspects of ChatGPT. It is a Web3 portal application that supports multiple public chains and provides DeFi and GameFi functions. At the application layer, ComingChat includes DID, wallet, encrypted communication, social network, DeFi, GameFi and other functions. At the protocol layer, ComingChat aims to support a multi-chain ecosystem.

  • MovEX: MovEX is the first AMM+order book hybrid liquidity DEX on Sui. It 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.

  • Movernance: Movernance is the first fully functional on-chain governance platform of the Sui ecosystem. It provides the necessary decentralized governance for the project by integrating the governance forum and on-chain voting functions. In addition, Movernance innovatively proposes a permission governance framework and a governance rights market (bribery platform), which improves the overall efficiency of decentralized governance and provides a solid foundation for the large-scale application of the project.

At present, the development of Sui ecology is relatively balanced and is in a healthy and benign state. The several projects that the official grants are also based on the core needs of a public chain, hoping to help the entire ecology to be built and developed in an orderly manner. As for these projects themselves, there are not many innovations and highlights. I believe that after the public chain foundation is built in the future, there will be more fresh and creative projects in the Sui ecology.

Token Economic Model

The total supply of SUI tokens is 10 billion, which will be allocated to 50% community reserves, 20% early contributors, 14% investors, 10% Mysten Lab Treasury, and 6% community access program IEO and application testers. The token has four main application scenarios: network staking, transaction fees, storage fees, governance voting, and SUI native asset trading tools.

The five core components of the economic model are:

  • The Proof of Stake mechanism PoS is used to select, incentivize and reward the actions of Sui platform operators (i.e. validators and SUI delegators).

  • All network operations charge a gas fee to reward participants in the proof-of-stake mechanism and prevent spam and denial-of-service attacks.

  • Sui’s storage fund is used to transfer staking rewards across time and compensate future validators for the storage costs of previously stored on-chain data.

  • On-chain voting is used for governance and protocol upgrades.

  • The SUI token is the native asset of the Sui platform.

Unlike the token economics model of the traditional proof-of-stake chain, Sui's token economics model adds the function of a storage fund. Since the blockchain is a data structure that only increases and never decreases, the amount of data that needs to be maintained on the chain will increase over time, and the cost will increase accordingly. This results in later users of Sui having to pay higher fees than early users. The storage fund was 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.

IEO and Whitelist Purchase Details

This IEO was conducted on three major exchanges. The latest sales details are as follows:

  • KuCoin: 2.25E SUI (not available for mainland users)

    • Group A's general public sale will be held from 08:00 on April 15 to 24:00 on April 22 (UTC+8). KuCoin will randomly take snapshots of users' total balances of USDT, USDC, ETH, and KCS every hour to determine the number of lottery tickets each user can ultimately receive. After the reservation period ends, the winners will be selected by lottery.

    • Group B identification sales will be conducted from 09:30 on April 20 to 24:00 on April 22 (UTC+8), and all whitelisted users must complete all subscription processes. This round is only for early contributors to Sui, and must be Sui whitelisted users. You can click the link to check the qualifications: https://verifysupporters.sui.io/. Sui has contacted whitelisted users via email, and users can participate in KuCoin using the email address of the assigned account.

  • Bybit: 9.4E SUI (not available for mainland users)

    • Subscribe on Bybit’s token sale platform ByStarter

    • Subscription period: April 21, 12:00 to April 24, 08:59 (UTC+8)

    • Distribution period: 09:00 on April 24 to 13:59 on April 24 (UTC+8)

    • Results announced: April 24, 14:00 (UTC+8)

  • OKX: 2.25E SUI (supports mainland users)

    • Subscribe on OKX’s token sale platform JumpStart

    • Purchase period: April 23, 10:00 to April 24, 10:00 (UTC+8)

    • Winning statistics: April 24, 10:00 (UTC+8)

    • Token distribution starts: April 24, 18:00 (UTC+8)

  • Whitelist Eligibility:

    • Early participants who joined the Sui Discord community before February 1, 2023, provided advice, participated in discussions, interacted with ecosystem projects, and advocated technological innovation, making important contributions to the development of the Sui ecosystem. (The probability of extraction is about 20%)

    • In the Capy Holidays competition for Testnet Wave 1, the winners selected via social media voting will be rewarded with SUI according to the stated competition terms.

    • Members who participate in organizing and operating Builder Houses and other important events will be rewarded with SUI after the mainnet goes online for their passion for Sui and the time and effort they put in.

Investment Value Discussion

Sui is often compared to Aptos because both projects were founded by former Facebook employees. Although Aptos is definitely worthy of praise, Sui is seen as an advanced version, with a more solid technical appearance. Aptos' current full circulation valuation is $13 billion and its circulation market value is $2.3 billion. Since the market has given Aptos such a high valuation at present, Sui will also have an extremely high valuation.

Sui's IEO public sale plan has indeed disappointed many community users, which is not conducive to the construction of the future community and has caused many active participants to lose confidence. Objectively speaking, although the Sui project team is not good at marketing, this Sui IEO has accumulated a lot of discussion and attention in the community, and the technicality and stability of the Sui public chain are worthy of recognition.

In general, with a strong team background, Sui may have a very high valuation if we refer to APT. The current IEO has caused a lot of hype and attention to SUI in the market, which may bring strong fomo sentiment. However, the shortcomings of Sui team's market operation are also worrying, and FTX's funding issues cannot be fully clarified.

The veDAO research team would like to remind you that there is no airdrop of SUI tokens and beware of scams during IEO.

SUI detailed information: https://app.vedao.com/projects/b3c9ebf718702bcfb425f58a51e8ba57d8a4a1a2a16360ff1d80a88d40cdf32c

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