Discover the power of DeepBook! Offering open access to deep liquidity for all apps building on Sui. Advanced trading capabilities can be incorporated into any app. Explore DeepBook’s architecture and create a new chapter in the story of DeFi with Sui.

DeepBook, an ecosystem-wide liquidity layer, plays a critical role in supporting Sui’s DeFi ecosystem by providing stable and efficient infrastructure for trading activities available to all builders. It serves as the foundation upon which DeFi apps can operate, providing greater access to assets and enabling efficient trading. With such a tool, DeFi builders can focus on developing unique features and incentives instead of troubleshooting problems with simple trading logic and bootstrapping independent liquidity pools. 

As a sophisticated Central Limit Order Book (CLOB) system, DeepBook enhances the efficiency and liquidity of Sui's overall DeFi ecosystem, enabling traders to execute orders quickly and at fair prices while leveraging advanced trading capabilities. This functionality not only attracts more participants but also reduces slippage and enhances overall market stability. Paired with Sui’s high-performance consensus engine, DeepBook offers a trading experience rivaling those of centralized trading entities. 

Understanding CLOBs and AMMs

Central Limit Order Books (CLOBs) and Automated Market Makers (AMMs) represent two distinct approaches to decentralized trading. CLOBs, like DeepBook, facilitate order matching by maintaining an order book of buy and sell orders. In contrast, AMMs utilize algorithms to determine asset prices and execute trades. While both CLOBs and AMMs offer unique advantages and cater to different trading preferences, CLOBs are particularly well-suited for traders seeking price discovery and order book transparency, making them an important tool for DeFi ecosystems.

Creating a CLOB presents significant challenges due to the complexity of order matching algorithms and the need for efficient market liquidity. Developing and maintaining a CLOB requires sophisticated technical expertise and substantial resources, which can be prohibitive for many DeFi builders. However, offering an open-access CLOB accessible to all builders can have a transformative impact on the ecosystem. 

DeepBook democratizes access to advanced trading functionalities, such as limit orders, allowing developers to create unique trading platforms tailored to specific market needs. For example, by integrating a native CLOB into their protocol, builders can experiment with hybrid models that combine unique elements of AMMs with the powerful features of a CLOB. This opens up possibilities for innovative trading experiences that cater to diverse user preferences and trading strategies.

Deciphering DeepBook's architecture

At the core of DeepBook lies its unique structure, where each trading pair has its own shared object representing the pool. DeepBook's approach utilizes Sui's consensus engine optimally by dedicating separate pools to each pair. This design minimizes conflicts between pairs and allows for parallelized transactions, enhancing efficiency. By leveraging Sui's consensus engine in this manner, DeepBook achieves remarkable throughput while ensuring seamless trading across various pairs.

DeepBook serves as a valuable resource for app developers seeking access to deep liquidity. Leveraging the DeepBook API, apps can provide sophisticated trading functionalities, enabling users to execute trades using its smart routing feature to ensure competitive swap prices.

Users place traders through app interfaces which are integrated with DeepBook. Trades involving separate pools are processed concurrently, even if initiated by the same user via the same app.

Sui’s next-generation consensus mechanism, Mysticeti, will enable transaction speed rivaling those of centralized execution environments. With Mysticeti’s lightning-fast transaction processing capabilities and DeepBook’s advanced trading infrastructure, users can expect seamless and efficient trading experiences equivalent to those of traditional financial infrastructure. As Mysticeti and DeepBook continue to evolve in tandem, they empower Sui DeFi builders to build products not feasible on other blockchain platforms.   

Order book structure

DeepBook employs a streamlined method for storing and processing orders. Each pool stores the unfilled maker orders and matches taker orders which are paired immediately upon submission. Order matching within DeepBook occurs autonomously, eliminating the need for centralized oversight.

DeepBook gives apps the ability to offer their users  the flexibility to place market orders and various types of limit orders. Market orders, which are considered taker orders, are matched instantly against existing maker orders upon submission, all within the same transaction. Limit orders, on the other hand, are initially matched as taker orders against existing maker orders. If the limit order cannot be completely filled, the remaining quantity can either be added to the order book as a maker order or discarded, depending on the limit order's configuration.

DeepBook utilizes a smart routing functionality, enabling traders to find the most efficient paths for token swap routes. Leveraging Depth-First-Search (DFS) algorithms, traders can simulate swaps across different pools to optimize their trades. This strategic approach ensures that swaps are cost-effective and enhances overall trading efficiency on the platform.

DEEP token 

DeepBook’s upcoming token, DEEP, will further improve the economic dynamics of DeepBook. Those serious about trading on Sui will be able to stake DEEP in order to receive discounted trading fees, additional maker incentives, and the ability to participate in DeepBook pool governance. 

Those that stake DEEP to a specific pool and actively swap within that pool over an epoch will pay less taker fees than those that are occasionally participating in swapping. Within an epoch, a user who has the threshold of staked DEEP will experience a decline in taker fees with respect to their volume taken in that pool over the epoch. Additionally, those who also meet the staked DEEP requirements and are providing liquidity to the pool they have staked to will receive maker incentives. Governance of pools allow for the adjustment of parameters around fees and staking requirements. There are no minimum stake requirements to participate in governance and governance rights increase with stake weights.

While the DEEP token is not currently available, unique soulbound NFTs have been distributed ahead of the upcoming token launch.

Detering wash trading

To deter manipulative practices, DeepBook adopts a carefully balanced approach to incentivizing liquidity provision. While incentives are offered to active liquidity providers, there's a risk of traders creating artificial volume to earn more rewards. To counter this exploit, DeepBook intentionally sets maker incentives lower than the fees collected on trades once a pool reaches a minimal liquidity threshold. This ensures that incentives are proportionate to genuine trading activity, discouraging manipulative behavior.

As an additional safeguard, DeepBook implements a burning mechanism for tokens involved in wash trading. If someone tries to inflate trading volumes within an epoch by repeatedly looping tokens through the pool without any net change, these tokens are labeled as residual tokens. To uphold platform integrity, these residual tokens are removed from circulation through burning. This ensures that rewards are earned through genuine trading activity and not deceptive practices like wash trading, maintaining the platform's integrity.

To learn more about the economic incentives and dynamics around DeepBook and the DEEP token, explore the DeepBook token whitepaper.

Turning the page with DeepBook

DeepBook democratizes access to advanced trading functionalities, empowering developers to create unique trading platforms and providing users with experiences rivaling those of centralized trading platforms. Through carefully balanced incentives and innovative mechanisms to deter manipulative practices like wash trading, DeepBook maintains platform integrity and ensures rewards are earned only through genuine trading activity. 

Numerous DeFi apps on Sui are integrating DeepBook into their product suites. Among the most prominent are Aftermath, Cetus, KriyaDEX, Turbos, and Typus. If you're eager to witness DeepBook's capabilities in action, these DeFi platforms serve as excellent showcases of its utilization. Explore their docs to see how they’re integrated DeepBook into their offerings.

As DeepBook continues to evolve and with the upcoming launch of the DEEP token, it stands to further revolutionize decentralized trading and empower DeFi participants within the Sui community.

Note: This content is for general educational and informational purposes only and should not be construed or relied upon as an endorsement or recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any asset, investment or financial product and does not constitute financial, legal, or tax advice.

Sui's phenomenal speed and innovative NFT technology makes it an excellent environment for games, and nothing will prove it more like XOCIETY, a new pop shooter with RPG elements coming to the network later this year. The game, by NDUS Interactive, features fast-paced accessible play in a rich environment built on the Unreal Engine 5.

Through PVP and PVE action, XOCIETY leverages Sui with onchain gaming and owned assets. Using Sui's dynamic NFTs, players own their avatars and items, providing an in-game asset experience unheard of in traditional gaming. The XOCIETY website suggests NFTs may be transferable or otherwise usable between the game and other projects, exploiting a unique capability of Web3. 

Sui's zkLogin simplifies player onboarding in XOCIETY. Unlike other blockchains, which would require players to install a wallet and acquire tokens, XOCIETY will let new players log in with existing credentials from third party services.

XOCIETY features an immersive environment and RPG elements, allowing character progression.

NDUS Interactive, the company creating XOCIETY, includes veteran game designers and builders. The team uses the tagline "Shoot, Earn, Pioneer" for the game, suggesting not only serious action, but also the ability to explore the game environment while fighting other players and NPCs or creatures. 

The company says that it expects to offer early access to XOCIETY in November or December of 2024. Gameplay footage can be seen on XOCIETY's YouTube channel.

Sui Mainnet launched last year, and community events around the world helped builders understand the potential for this groundbreaking blockchain technology, but Sui Basecamp showed that Sui has truly arrived. 

Over 1,100 people from 65 countries attended Sui's global event, held in Paris this year, to find how Sui established itself firmly in gaming and DeFi. Over two days, the community heard from over 100 speakers in 44 sessions. Major announcements from companies such as Playtron, NHN, and First Digital complemented Sui's meteoric growth in trading volume and Total Value Locked (TVL).

Mysten Labs CEO Evan Chang delivers his keynote to kick off Sui Basecamp in Paris.

“We are not just here to build a blockchain, we’re not just here to build decentralized software," said Evan Cheng, Mysten Labs CEO and co-founder during his Sui Basecamp keynote. "Why we are all here today is to fundamentally reimagine human and software interaction."

The event featured announcements about how Sui's already blistering speed and mainstream accessibility will become even greater. Already capable of record-breaking transactions-per-second (TPS), further consensus innovation promises to outstrip anything in the industry. And Mysten Lab's Enoki gives non-blockchain companies the simplest path to take advantage of concepts such as digital ownership and verifiable asset data.

Meltem Demirors, blockchain expert and self-proclaimed Aspiring Cult Leader, gave a talk titled "The trillion dollar whale: bringing atoms and electrons onchain."

The community's excitement at Basecamp 2024 was palpable, as attendees learned about all the exciting things to come, gained inspiration about what they could build, and met face-to-face, many for the first time.

Breaking boundaries

Blockchains from Bitcoin to Solana and Ethereum solved the general problem of decentralized transactions, but Sui arrives with a truly modern network environment capable of supporting enterprise apps and frameworks. Sui's object-oriented data structure lets developers create real apps to engage and delight users, on a scalable network that handles ever increasing traffic. 

Unlike traditional enterprise networks, the Move programming language allows for secure smart contract code. These building blocks lead to a future that lets code replace intermediaries and institutions as the global coordinating mechanism of intelligent assets.  

Greg Siourounis, Managing Director of the Sui Foundation, greets Sui Basecamp attendees.

Mysticeti, a new technology developed at Mysten Labs by founding members of Sui, makes consensus on the network even more performant. Announced at Basecamp 2024, Mysticeti redesigns the already innovative Bullshark and Narwhal-based consensus engine to further remove latency, allowing transactions to finalize at speeds more than sufficient for the most demanding enterprise and financial frameworks. 

“In practice, we’ve implemented Mysticeti to mimic the Sui Maninet environment, and we’ve achieved about 390 milliseconds consensus," said Dmitri Perelman, Mysten Labs Head of Engineering. "As far as we know, this is the fastest achieved settlement finality.”

Mysten Labs went one further, announcing Enoki, a new service platform letting Web2 companies realize the benefits of the blockchain. These services, such as zkLogin's effortless onboarding and sponsored transactions, remove the friction caused by legacy blockchain requirements. Leveraging Enoki, companies will be able to integrate Sui's smart contract and digital asset technology into their customer applications, offering extensive new capabilities and services.

Empowering industries 

In less than one year as a production network, the fact that Sui already made its mark in gaming and DeFi was clear from the companies presenting and exhibiting at Sui Basecamp. Sui's DeFi growth has been nothing short of phenomenal, nearing $700 million TVL in under a year. DeFi protocols such as Navi, Scallop, Turbos, and Bluefin show breathtaking volume on a daily basis. 

Sui Basecamp attendees from 65 countries had the opportunity to meet each other face-to-face, many for the first time.

Cementing Sui as the network for stable DeFi growth, First Digital announced it would bring FDUSD, its $3.3 billion stablecoin, over to Sui in a native format. This new stablecoin gives Sui DeFi users a non-volatile trading option where they can store value. The First Digital announcement joined a pre-Basecamp announcement that DeepBook, Sui's native liquidity layer, would launch its own token, DEEP, later this year.

“As a new company, we feel that the industry is going to change, and that newer protocols like Sui will overtake established protocols,” said Vincent Chok, First Digital's founder and CEO. “We want to have a $10 billion market cap by the end of 2024, with $1 billion on Sui by the end of the year.”

The Gaming Arcade situated in the Sui Basecamp venue showed that gaming studios have a bright future on Sui. The network's transactional speed and scalability deliver the missing pieces games have needed to succeed in Web3. The Gaming Arcade offered attendees the opportunity to try out new games, such as Panzerdogs and E4C: Fallen Arena, currently available and soon to launch on Sui. New partners NHN and Baby Shark, already giants in gaming, were on hand to show why they chose Sui for their initial blockchain efforts.

Adeniyi Abiodun, CPO and co-founder of Mysten Labs talked about Sui's strengths and introduced Playtron's new SuiPlay0X1 mobile gaming device.

Making its handheld gaming device debut soon after coming out of stealth at the Game Developers Conference and Sui Gaming Summit last month, Playtron joined Adeniyi Abiodun, CPO and co-founder of Mysten Labs to announce SuiPlay0X1. This gaming deck runs the company's lightweight games-focused operating system and integrates directly with Sui. It will fuel onchain games, giving players immediate access to a wide variety of experiences. 

“Web3’s iPhone moment is not an iPhone,” said Playtron CEO Kirt McMaster of the new handheld.

The SuiPlay0X1, a new mobile gaming device from Playtron, integrates Sui, letting users play onchain games. For the community

Like a bullet train gathering momentum, builders around the world began learning about Sui last year, exploring its capabilities and imagining what they could create. They attended Builder Houses, Sui Connect events, seminars, and meet-ups, a communal understanding experience letting them push the envelope of what an object can be, how smart contracts can enact policies, and where dynamic fields can take their apps.

Fud the Pug made a rare IRL appearance at Sui Basecamp.

The palpable energy at Sui Basecamp between new startups, existing companies discovering blockchain, and individual developers showed the Sui bullet train is up to speed. 

We want to thank all who attended and made it such a stellar event, and invite all builders who want to engage with the new generation of secure network computing to join us at future events and engage with Sui. 

BytePlus, ByteDance technology solutions subsidiary takes its first foray into blockchain with Sui. BytePlus will work with Mysten Labs to adapt its recommendation solutions and augmented reality products, among other services, to Sui.

The company chose Sui as the best blockchain network to offer its services in support of gaming and social apps. 

BytePlus offers a variety of services, including a content distribution network, personalisation solutions, and user engagement tools that leverage cutting edge AR technology, and data analysis. Making these services available to Sui builders, gives them a leg up in developing apps with global impact. 

One such service, BytePlus Recommend, lets builders create heavily personalized apps, giving users a satisfying, tailored experience. Another service, BytePlus Effects, includes 80,000 ready-to-use stickers and effects for video apps. Combined with Sui's unique NFT technology, this service could power groundbreaking new social apps.

BytePlus, will be able to pioneer new ground on Sui. Leveraging digital assets with dynamic features and programmable ownership policies, the company can build entirely new experiences that will grow its user base. Sui's user-friendly features, such as zkLogin and sponsored transactions, eliminates the barriers for mass adoption of blockchain technology.

The technology prowess exhibited by BytePlus, combined with the next generation innovations of Sui, will lead to innovative new services and apps.

From finance to art, gaming to wireless, a broad range of industries have seen a flood of startups working to disrupt the status quo using blockchain technology. But the travel industry, which evokes visions of crowded airports, whirlwind tours, and luxury cruises, might seem too legacy-driven to embrace blockchain innovation. One startup thinks it’s high time that changes.

Quantum Temple's digital platform brings transparency and community empowerment to travel through blockchain technology. Sui technologies like zkLogin, NFTs, and sponsored transactions provide the infrastructure that facilitates Web3 functionality in what is traditionally a very low-tech, consumer-centric industry.

The company recently announced its new Water Civilization experience, the first ever Web3-enabled travel experience at a UNESCO World Heritage Site, in partnership with the Indonesian Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy, Desa Manukaya Let, and Mysten Labs. Through this program, Quantum Temple gives tourists the chance to learn about Bali’s water heritage, water temples, and a ritual called water purification at Pura Tirta Empul, one of the most important and most visited sacred water temples in Bali. Powered by Sui technology, it is a one-of-a-kind experience that blends traditional tourism with innovative, blockchain-powered ticketing and NFT artifacts.

Quantum Temple partnered with the Indonesian Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy to create the Water Civilization experience, giving tourists an opportunity to immerse themselves in a unique aspect of Balinese culture.

“We chose Sui because it was one of the only protocols that was really focused on consumer applications, which is very, very exciting because that is not the case in other ecosystems,” said Quantum Temple founder and CEO Linda Adami. “We’re trying to embed every single thing that can smooth the user experience so that my mom can use it without any difficulty.”

Though it might not be the first to come to mind, Adami sees travel as a path to mass adoption and onboarding of consumers into the Web3 world.

Regenerating the world through blockchain

The concept of regenerative tourism lives at Quantum Temple's core. Whereas many sustainable travel initiatives focus on offsetting the harm caused by travel, regenerative travel attempts to leave places and local communities better off than they were.

Unlike many of her peers, Adami didn’t come to blockchain technology through the cryptocurrency world. She was introduced to it while working with the Dubai government to find ways that pre-regulatory, cutting edge technologies–such as AI, 3D printing, and robotics automation–could be used for public good.

“I saw how blockchain infrastructure could be used to unlock public value and to address a lot of the inefficiencies that are trapped in legacy industries,” she said.

When Covid hit in 2020, she took a sabbatical in Bali, Indonesia, and that’s where she found the inspiration for her next big move: bringing equity and more rewarding experiences to the travel industry using blockchain technology.

Quantum Temple invites tourists to take part in the water purification ritual at Pura Tirta Empul , one of the most sacred Balinese water temples.

While in Bali, Adami learned that 70 percent of the local economy depends on tourism. When the pandemic shut down travel, the tourism industry in Bali came crashing down, and Adami saw that many people had to go back to farming just to put food on the table. 

“I spent a lot of time engaging with the local communities and understanding what was happening, what their life was like,” said Adami. “And I realized that even before the pandemic, tourism here was not fundamentally equitable.” 

Despite generating a great deal of income, revenue was not equitably distributed among the people serving the industry. In fact, the United Nations Tourism Organization estimates that for every $100 spent on a vacation in a developing country, only $5 stays in that country.

At the same time, she saw other problems with the traditional tourism model. For one, people increasingly crave authentic experiences during their travels but don’t always know where to find them. In addition, because so much of local travel is cash-based, local governments often struggle to access the data that could help them prevent overtourism.

Quantum Temple’s Water Civilization experience features a visual anthropology exhibit in a custom bamboo knowledge corridor. Local, specially trained guides introduce travelers to 14 hidden spots that are rarely visited by tourists.

So she put her blockchain expertise to work making tourism more transparent and equitable, beginning in Indonesia. She founded Quantum Temple with two missions: to use blockchain, NFT, and cryptocurrency technologies to help developing countries launch past the legacy systems traditionally used by the travel industry, and to connect travelers with unmatched experiences that marry the physical and digital worlds of art and culture.

Leveraging Sui technologies, Quantum Temple is transforming a highly consumer-focused industry in such a way that many people don’t even know they’re using the blockchain for the first time.

Modernizing the travel experience

For now, Quantum Temple predominantly focuses on experiences, meaning all the tours and activities people do once they arrive at a destination.

“Eighty percent of this particular segment of the value chain of travel is offline,” said Adami, “so there’s an opportunity to help local communities and providers leapfrog directly to the future into a blockchain infrastructure.”

The starting point for users is the Quantum Temple Passport, a decentralized loyalty program that unlocks access to a whole suite of products and services, including in-person tours and experiences in Bali, NFTs and physical art, and crowdfunded programs benefiting local communities.

Behind the scenes, signing up for the passport creates a non-custodial Sui wallet, and the passport is a dynamic, soulbound token on Sui. Easing entry, zkLogin lets people sign up using an existing account from services such as Google or Facebook. New users may not even know they now own an NFT, just that their QT Passport can only be used by them. This ability to serve Web2 users in a streamlined, intuitive way is crucial to Quantum Temple’s success in an industry where both users and providers are often not familiar with blockchain technology.

“We were able to integrate zkLogin in four days,” said Adami. “And when we did that, we doubled our user base in less than one month.”

QT Passport holders can book one-of-a-kind travel experiences in Bali, with NFT tickets being claimed on Sui. These NFT tickets are digital assets that function as collectible memories that are saved to users’ wallets. 

Angela Herliani Tanoesoedibjo, Indonesia's Vice Minister of Tourism, uses an NFT as a ticket for the Quantum Temple experience. These NFT tickets allow governments to better understand where tourists are going.

At least 70 percent of the money generated by these experiences stays in local Bali communities. When a trip is over, users see the local impact their experience had, onchain and displayed in their personal profile. Quantum Temple users can also contribute to the Impact Fund, a crowdfunding platform that supports a variety of local programs. 

Introducing NFT and phygital souvenirs

A uniquely modern element to travel created by Quantum Temple is the inventive mix of physical and digital assets that tourists can collect. Travelers can purchase physical souvenirs, such as wooden sculptures handmade by local master craftspeople and commissioned by Quantum Temple. In addition, Quantum Temple created an NFT collection, the Nagas of Bali, which they offered as a drop in partnership with Tradeport. Two lucky recipients win a trip to Bali, and all proceeds of the NFT program to towards regenerative tourism and cultural preservation in Bali.

Quantum Temple is working to expand its art offerings, collaborating with local institutions to build a catalog of high-quality products crafted by locals, using blockchain to provide authenticity and provenance for the products. 

“We’re going hardcore with phygital in a serious way, where we’ll embed NFC chips, so it’s really about connecting physical with digital and digital with physical and guaranteeing provenance through embedded systems and hardware,” said Adami.

Tearing down data silos to ease overcrowding

Another way Quantum Temple seeks to benefit local communities is by working with governments to collect data that can be used to improve the visitor experience and ease overcrowding.

“We’re trying to solve a pretty difficult data silo problem for local authorities,” said Adami. Right now, in the majority of emerging markets, 80 percent of cultural attractions are offline and completely undigitized. Even for the most popular destinations, including one Bali temple that receives an estimated 2 million visitors per year, visitation data is not reliable. And because on-site ticketing systems are typically cash-based and don’t communicate with each other, it’s impossible for local institutions to know how tourism flows from one cultural attraction to another.

“Overtourism is a big problem in many parts of the world,” said Adami, “so one of the most exciting things Quantum Temple wants to do is connect the cultural landscape by embedding blockchain infrastructure into a lot of these sites to redistribute traffic to places that are not frequently visited.”

An ambitious itinerary

For now, Quantum Temple is running programs in about 10 communities in Bali, with plans to triple that in Bali this year, as well as expand to new destinations within Indonesia and five other countries in the near future. The company is also in talks with a global travel technology infrastructure company about ways to expand Quantum Temple’s decentralized, blockchain-based loyalty program to include airlines, hotels, and other hospitality companies. 

Adami sees all of this as an opportunity to help blockchain reach regular consumers.

“I think we’re demonstrating to a lot of people that we can actually build user experiences that are for mass adoption and that anyone can use without worrying about the technicalities,” said Adami. “Ultimately, we want to change industries for the greater good, and we are showing how blockchain can unlock value and redistribute it for greater purposes in an industry.”

Sui's first native, non-wrapped stablecoin is coming in the form of FDUSD, a popular US dollar-backed stablecoin currently available on Ethereum and BNB Chain. First Digital Labs, the purveyor of FDUSD, is introducing the token to the broader blockchain industry with its debut on Sui.

First Digital Labs backs FDUSD on a one-to-one basis with the US dollar. It maintains reserves in Asian banks and US Treasury debt to support the token. As of February 29, 2024, 3,292,039,236.91 FDUSD was in circulation, according to an auditors report. 

Sui's native token, SUI, used to pay gas fees and stake validators, serves as the fundamental cryptocurrency on the network. Projects and DeFi protocols on the network create their own tokens for various purposes, including commerce within a game world and liquid staking.

Stablecoins such as FDUSD serve as a vital component of Sui's cryptocurrency ecosystem, appealing to users seeking a reliable store of value. They bridge the traditional finance world, with its generally trustworthy notions of value, and cryptocurrency, which offers technical security. 

On Sui, FDUSD will offer people a non-volatile cryptocurrency option. First Digital Labs has not set timing for availability as of yet.

Note: This content is for general educational and informational purposes only and should not be construed or relied upon as an endorsement or recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any asset, investment or financial product and does not constitute financial, legal, or tax advice.

New research around a byzantine consensus protocol called Mysticeti gives Sui the potential to drastically reduce transaction latency and lower CPU requirements for validators. Sui is today a low-latency leader due to its fast path, but the new consensus protocol extends lower latencies for all transactions.

Sui's design combines the Narwhal-Bullshark consensus algorithm with a fast path, and makes a distinction between processing involving owned objects and shared objects. It processes the former on a fast path and the latter on a consensus path in committing to the blockchain. Under this mechanism, Sui set a record in 2023 of 5,414 TPS and 65 million transactions in a single day.  

Continued research resulted in Mysticeti, which improves on Narwhal-Bullshark by addressing specific latency issues inherent in the system. Test results showed 500 milliseconds to commit for consensus and 250 milliseconds for single-owner transactions, while maintaining extremely high throughputs. Designed specifically for Sui, Mysticeti supports both single-owner object transactions, the fast path, and shared object transactions, at a fraction of the CPU costs and complexity of today’s Sui network.

Redesigning consensus

As with Narwhal and Tusk, Mysticeti uses a consensus algorithm based on a direct acyclic graph (DAG), where each validator proposes blocks of transactions linking to past blocks. Narwhal-Tusk showed that a DAG-based consensus algorithm can decouple latency from throughput, and maintain extremely high throughput even in the presence of network and node failures. A primary-workers architecture allowed Narwhal-based designs to increase throughput arbitrability without limits. 

However, Narwhal-Tusk's latency of commits was slightly worse than with coupled designs, such as Jolteon and Ditto, the algorithm adopted by Meta’s Diem project, for three reasons: 

First, Narwhal certifies blocks individually, as they need to be signed by a quorum of validators, each round, before being shared with all. This process results in a latency of one and a half round trips for blocks during each round. As a commit takes two rounds in Bullshark, blocks need three round trips for a commit. Mysticeti validators instead just sign and share their blocks, achieving latency of a half round trip for each block during a round. This change results in a 50 percent reduction of round trips and is, to our knowledge, the lowest number of round-trips for any existing DAG-based consensus algorithm.

Second, Narwhal and Tusk's primary-worker distinction in each validator increased throughput but may also increase latency in some circumstances. A worker needs to ensure that a sufficient number of other workers receive a block before sharing its hash with the primary to include in a header. In worst case scenarios latency increases by another round trip. This worker-primary architecture allows consensus-scaling when network bandwidth on a single machine becomes a bottleneck, which tends to occur in the range of hundreds of thousands TPS. Mysticeti breaks away from this architecture and simply inlines transactions within the primary’s block, which still allows for very high throughput in the range of over 100,000 TPS.

Finally, Bullshark and Tusk, as specified in the original paper, commit only every two or approximately three rounds, respectively, and they only commit the sub-DAG linked by the leader block. Due to this cycle, an unlucky transaction that was included just after a committed block may wait twice the number of rounds before being committed, or even more if it is not linked by the next leader. Mysticeti’s novel commit rule naturally appoints multiple leaders every round, allowing for more transactions to be committed earlier. This innovation gives Mysticeti the greatest boost in reducing latency.

As a result of these changes, Mysticeti achieves commits within three message delays, which translates to about 500 milliseconds in a testing environment on a wide area network (WAN). It still maintains a solid throughput of over 50,000 TPS under low latency, and over 100,000 TPS for a latency of around 1 second. It maintains other benefits of DAG consensus, including robustness against failures, censorship resistance, chain quality, high throughput, and full usage of network resources across validators. Full performance results are included in the paper, Mysticeti: Low-Latency DAG Consensus with Fast Commit Path. Source code for Mysticeti's evaluation can be found on GitHub. 

Moreover, Sui's fast path for owned object transactions achieves finality after two round trips in an ideal scenario, around 250 milliseconds on a WAN. To maintain this very fast mode, Mysticeti also includes a fast path. A validator can include a transaction for which other validators then vote through the Mysticeti DAG without additional signatures. Mysticeti inlines transactions within blocks, enabling this process. As a result, a transaction can be certified without a mass of signature generation and verification, allowing five to 10 times faster path transactions to be processed by the same CPU. 

Setting a new standard

Latency of 500 milliseconds to commit is the fastest ever reported at high throughputs for large-scale WAN consensus, and has the potential to revolutionize the blockchain industry. Couple that with scalable infrastructure reaching 50,000 TPS, and Sui becomes a compelling competitor to centralized computing systems in terms of raw performance.

Sui's record-breaking transactions-per-second performance comes partially due to a mathematical construct, the directed acyclic graph (DAG). This construct speeds up network transactions by processing them in the most efficient manner, rather than a first-come, first served linear progression.

Combining the non-linear nature of a DAG with a blockchain, a distributed ledger designed to ensure data integrity, entwines the virtues of two technologies. As a blockchain network, Sui preserves historicity and custody of data objects, while its DAG-based consensus system makes manipulation of those data objects nimble.

What is a DAG?

A DAG is a type of data structure differing from the linear chain structure of traditional blockchains. Unlike blockchains, which consist of blocks linked together in a linear fashion, DAGs are more like a web of interconnected nodes. To understand DAGs, let's first break down the acronym in reverse order. 

In the context of distributed ledger technology, a graph database organizes data using interconnected structures akin to a web of relationships. The relationships between each individual data entry, or transaction, with others is used to form a network of information based on causal relationships. Through this approach, complex transactional relationships and dependencies are captured in the network.

Adding acyclic to the definition means there is no way to create a loop or cycle within the ledger or database. In other words, it is impossible to create a path within the database that leads to a situation where an earlier transaction relies on a later transaction. This property ensures that information flows in a one-way direction, bringing us to the final part of the acronym, directed. Being a directed graph, each relationship has a defined direction indicating the flow of information within the database. The directed nature allows for clear and unambiguous data flow, crucial for maintaining integrity and facilitating efficient processing of transactions.

Transactions within a DAG have explicit relationships with others that create a web-like structure. Note that eventually each transaction is observed by all nodes and, for simplicity, this image is showing that a transaction is only observed by a single node.

In summary, a DAG is a database structured as a network of interconnected pieces of information, or transactions, that are linked together based on their dependencies forming a graph that expands with each new transaction.

Blockchains and DAGs

Blockchains typically batch a group of transactions into a block which then go through a consensus process as a single entity. Blocks are linked together in a linear fashion which requires that the network’s state changes in a stepwise manner, block by block. On the other hand, transactions within a DAG are able to achieve consensus independently, bypassing the process of grouping many transactions into a block for the consensus process. 

In a blockchain, all the network validators have an agreed upon network state that they all work from. Validators assess a single group of transactions at the same time and cannot progress until a supermajority has come to an agreement on the validity of the block. For a block to be considered valid and be cemented into the blockchain, all of the transactions within that block must be valid. If a single transaction within the block is not valid, the entire block is discarded and must be recreated without the invalid transaction. Achieving consensus in a blockchain requires the validators to operate in lockstep, approving transactions block by block.

Similar to how consensus is achieved in a blockchain, transactions within a DAG achieve consensus once signed-off by a supermajority of the network validators. A key difference lies in the fact that each validator within a DAG has a different subset of the network state. In other words, the entire network state is not stored in each validator but instead can only be observed by cumulating individual validators' understanding of the network. 

There is no block of transactions that is validated at once by all validators, instead individual transactions are propagated throughout the network gaining signatures from individual validators that have knowledge of the network state needed to validate the transaction. Once the transaction obtains signatures from a supermajority of the network validators, it has achieved consensus and is considered finalized.

As a result of this structure, utilizing a DAG for transaction propagation and consensus allows for transactions to be confirmed asynchronously and concurrently, offering a more flexible and scalable approach compared to blockchains.

From DAG to Sui blockchain

Sui utilizes a DAG for transaction propagation and consensus and then, in a separate process, orders transactions into checkpoints, which are similar to blocks. Checkpoints are linked together and ordered in a linear fashion, similar to the structure of a typical blockchain. The main difference about Sui's blockchain structure is that transactions grouped into checkpoints are already finalized, in contrast to typical blockchains structures which group transactions not yet finalized into blocks. 

The main difference about Sui's blockchain structure is that transactions grouped into checkpoints are already finalized, in contrast to typical blockchains structures which group transactions not yet finalized into blocks.

Linking it all together

Sui's innovative approach combines the best features of both DAGs and blockchains, creating a network that offers unparalleled speed and flexibility. By utilizing a DAG for transaction propagation and consensus, Sui ensures that transactions can be confirmed asynchronously and concurrently, allowing for a more scalable and efficient system compared to traditional blockchains. However, to maintain the integrity and order of historical information, Sui employs a separate process to organize transactions into checkpoints, akin to blocks in a blockchain.  

These checkpoints are then linked together and ordered in a linear fashion, providing a familiar structure for storing and accessing historical data. Unlike traditional blockchains where transactions are grouped into blocks before consensus, in Sui transactions included in checkpoints are already finalized, offering a streamlined and efficient approach to transaction validation and storage. 

This hybrid architecture allows Sui to harness the benefits of both DAGs and blockchains, creating a robust and adaptable platform for decentralized applications and smart contracts.

Note: This content is for general educational and informational purposes only and should not be construed or relied upon as an endorsement or recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any asset, investment or financial product and does not constitute financial, legal, or tax advice.

Migrating to the Move 2024 edition introduces changes that make Move easier to write, and hopefully easier to read. The relatively few breaking changes in the source language better position Move to handle future advancements.

Many of these changes enhance the source language, affecting the compiler without requiring any changes to the binary representation published on chain.

Existing code will continue to compile, even with the addition of these new features. And because these features are opt-in, you can write your packages with the new features, even if your dependencies do not include them. Opting to take advantage of the new features in your current modules, however, introduces a few breaking changes.

Read our migration guide on GitHub for full details.

How to migrate

To migrate a project to Move 2024 Beta, you have two options:

Delete your existing Move.lock file (if one exists) to make sure you're using the newest sui-framework version.

Run sui move migrate in the root of your Move project. See the Automatic migration section of the migration guide for more information.

Alternatively, update your Move.toml file's [package] entry to include edition = "2024.beta". If you do this, you might receive a number of new errors as part of our breaking changes.

Automatic migration 

Move 2024 includes an automatic migration script that you can use by calling

sui move migrate

in the root of your Move project. Upon running, your console prompts you for which Move edition to use. If you select 2024.beta, the script invokes the compiler and attempts to automatically update your code to avoid the breaking changes the update introduces (including marking structs as public, mutable variables with the mut keyword, avoiding restricted keywords, swapping friends for public(package), and even updating paths to global paths in many cases).

After this script runs, your console displays a diff of the changes the script intends to make. If you accept the changes, the script updates your code and your

Move.toml

file automatically. You are now using Move 2024 Beta.

New features

Here is a brief overview of some of the new features in Move 2024.

Method syntax

You can call certain functions now as methods using the

.

syntax. For example, the following call:

vector::push_back(&mut v, coin::value(&c));

can now be written as:

v.push_back(c.value());

Where the receiver of the method (

v

and c in this example) is automatically borrowed if necessary (as &mut v and &c respectively).

You can call any function defined in the same module as the receiver's type as a method if it takes the receiver as its first argument.

For functions defined outside the module, you can declare methods using

public use fun

and use fun.

Index syntax

With method syntax, you can annotate certain functions as being

#[syntax(index)]

methods. You then call these methods using v[i]-style calls.

For example,

*&mut v[i] = v[j];

resolves to

*vector::borrow_mut(&mut v, i) = *vector::borrow(&v, j);

public(package)

friend

declarations, and the associated public(friend) visibility modifiers, are deprecated. In their place is the public(package) visibility modifier, which allows calling functions only within the same package where they are defined.

Positional fields

You can now define structs with positional fields, which are accessed by a zero-based index. For example,

public struct Pair(u64, u64) has copy, drop, store.

then to access each field,

public fun sum(p: &Pair): u64 {   p.0 + p.1 }

And as this example shows, you can now declare abilities after the struct field list.

Nested use and standard library defaults

You can now nest

use

aliases for more conciseness.

use sui::{balance, coin::{Self, Coin}};

Additionally, the following use declarations are now automatically included in every module:

use std::vector; use std::option::{Self, Option}; use sui::object::{Self, ID, UID}; use sui::transfer; use sui::tx_context::{Self, TxContext};

Automatic referencing in equality

Equality operations,

==

and !=, now automatically borrow if one side is a reference and the other is not. For example,

fun check(x: u64, r: &u64): bool {   x == r }

is equivalent to

fun check(x: u64, r: &u64): bool {   &x == r }

This automatic borrowing can occur on either side of

==

and !=.

Loop labels

When nesting loops, it can be convenient to break to the outer loop. For example,

let mut i = 0; let mut j = 0; let mut terminate_loop = false; while (i < 10) {     while (j < 10) {         if (haystack(i, j) == needle) {             terminate_loop = true;             break;         };         j = j + 1;     };     if (terminate_loop) break;     i = i + 1; }

Now, you can directly name the outer loop (

outer

in this case) and break it all at once:

let mut i = 0; let mut j = 0; 'outer: while (i < 10) {     while (j < 10) {         if (haystack(i, j) == needle) break'outer;         j = j + 1;     };     i = i + 1; }

break

with value

It's now possible to break with a value from a loop. For example,

let mut i = 0; let x: u64 = loop {     if (v[i] > 10) break i;     i = i + 1; };

You can achieve this with labels, as well. For example,

let mut i = 0; let mut j = 0; let item = 'outer: loop {     while (j < 10) {         let item = haystack(i, j);         if (item == needle) break'outer option::some(item);         j = j + 1;     };     i = i + 1;     if (i == 10) break option::none(); };

Breaking changes 

Breaking changes are, unfortunately, a growing pain in Move 2024. We anticipate these changes to be minimally invasive and provided a migration script to automate them in most cases. In addition, these changes pave the way for new features still to come in Move 2024.

Datatype visibility requirements

Currently, all structs in Move are, by convention, public: any other module or package can import them and refer to them by type. To make this clearer, Move 2024 requires that all structs be declared with the public keyword. For example,

// legacy code struct S { x: u64 } // Move 2024 code public struct S { x: u64 }

Any non-public struct produces an error at this time, although the Move team is working on new visibility options for future releases.

Mutability requirements

Previously, all variables in Move were implicitly mutable. For example,

fun f(s: S, y: u64): u64 {     let a = 0;     let S { x } = s;     a = 1;     x = 10;     y = 5;     x + y }

Now, you must declare mutable variables explicitly:

fun f(s: S, mut y: u64): u64 {     let mut a = 0;     let S { mut x } = 5;     a = 1;     x = 10;     y = 5;     x + y }

The compiler now produces an error if you attempt to reassign or borrow a variable mutably without this explicit declaration.

Removing friends and public(friend)

Friends and the

public(friend)

visibilities were introduced early in Move's development, predating even the package system. As indicated in the public(package) section, public(package) deprecates public(friend) in Move 2024.

The following declaration now produces an error:

module pkg::m {     friend pkg::a;     public(friend) fun f() { ... } } module pkg::a {     fun calls_f() { ... pkg::m::f() ... } }

Instead, if you want your function to be visible only in the package, write:

module pkg::m {     public(package) fun f() { ... } } module pkg::a {     // this now works directly     fun calls_f() { ... pkg::m::f() ... } }

New keywords

Looking toward the future, Move 2024 Beta adds the following keywords to the language:

enum

, for, match, mut, and type. The compiler, unfortunately, now produces parsing errors when it finds these in other positions. This is a necessary change as the language matures. If you perform automatic migration, the migration tool renames these as enum and so on, rewriting the code to use these escaped forms.

Revised paths and namespaces

Move 2024 revises how paths and namespaces work compared to legacy Move, toward easing

enum

aliasing in the future. Consider the following snippet from a test annotation in the sui_system library:

use sui_system::sui_system; ... #[expected_failure(abort_code = sui_system::validator_set::EInvalidCap)]

Legacy Move would always treat a three-part name as an address (

sui_system

), module ( validator_set), and module member ( EInvalidCap). Move 2024 respects scope for use, so sui_system in the attribute resolves to the module, producing a name resolution error overall.

To avoid cases where this is the intended behavior, Move 2024 introduces a prefix operation for global qualification. To use it, you can rewrite this annotation as:

use sui_system::sui_system; ... #[expected_failure(abort_code = ::sui_system::validator_set::EInvalidCap)]                              // ^ note `::` here

The migration script attempts to remediate naming errors using global qualification when possible.

Follow along

The beta release of Move 2024 comes with some powerful new features beyond the breaking changes described here. There are also more on the horizon. Join the Sui newsletter to learn about new, exciting features coming to Move this year, including syntactic macros, enums with pattern matching, and other user-defined syntax extensions.

Please, provide any feedback or report any issues you encounter via GitHub, Discord, or the Sui Developer Forums.

DeepBook, Sui's first native liquidity layer, is launching its own native token, DEEP, reinforcing its position as key financial infrastructure for the Sui network. DEEP is designed for institutions and institutional traders using DeepBook to provide wholesale liquidity in DeFi. The combination of DeepBook and DEEP delivers the preeminent venue in Web3 for sourcing liquidity by DeFi apps. 

Key features of the DEEP token include volume-based fees and maker incentives. Participating in those features requires that users reach specific staking thresholds in DeepBook pools. Those users will also contribute to governance of those pools by staking their DEEP tokens.

DeepBook's fully on-chain central limit order book architecture allows DeFi protocols and professional traders to access its pools and offer a range of rich retail services. Along with market token orders, users can place limit orders in DeepBook pools, allowing for sophisticated trading functionality. Deepbook delivers an efficient foundation for DeFi, supporting liquidity and unlocking avenues for innovation in financial products.

The DEEP token will officially launch later this year. In the meantime, DeepBook developed a unique soulbound NFT, called DBClaimNFT, made available on March 28. Recipients of this NFT will be able to unwrap it and obtain liquid, fungible DEEP tokens upon token launch. 

The DBClaimNFT, distributed on March 28, 2024, shows the quantity of fungible DEEP tokens it can be unwrapped into when the token launches. This NFT cannot be transferred, swapped, or sold. Designed for wholesale trading

The DEEP token's design incentivizes DeepBook's many diverse participants to work together in offering ample and around-the-clock liquidity, strengthening wholesale liquidity. It will contribute to DeepBook's foundational liquidity for DeFi protocols. This design includes features geared towards institutional users.

Volume-based fees: While anyone can trade on DeepBook, the fees these traders pay decrease incrementally with respect to the trader’s activity in that pool. This allows institutional traders, DeFi protocols, and other active participants to pay low fees on the margin, whereas infrequent traders pay higher fees and would likely use DeFi protocols or brokers instead.

Maker incentives: DeepBook's liquidity providers, called makers, receive extra DeepBook token-denominated incentives, which, in the aggregate, decrease in the amount of total liquidity provided in a given epoch. This allows DeepBook to maintain consistent liquidity depth even in periods that would otherwise see low liquidity.

Stake-based participation: Participation in the two programs above (discounted fees and incentives) for a given pool requires traders to stake a minimum number of tokens in the pool in advance and for the duration of the epoch. These stakes earn no explicit rewards. Any trader that does not stake this minimum number both will pay the standard fee to trade in that DeepBook pool and will be ineligible for maker incentives emanating from the pool. This upfront capital requirement further positions DeepBook as a hub for wholesale rather than retail liquidity.

Stake-based governance: Separately, stakers in a given pool control governance for that pool. Specifically, parameters around fees and maker incentives for a given pool will be controlled by stakers in that pool, with governance rights that increase with stake weights.

Protecting users

Many DeFi protocols are designed such that they inadvertently incentivize two self-serving behaviors from liquidity providers, wash trading and governance capture. Wash trading involves creating artificial volume to take advantage of volume discounts, while governance capture may let traders set rules favorable to themselves, at the expense of other users. The new token includes key protections in anticipation of these exploits.

As protection against wash trading, tokens collected in an epoch by a given pool can never be less than tokens distributed in that epoch by that same pool, with the delta being burned. In addition, total incentives decrease sharply in the amount of total activity, blunting a trader's economic incentive to send artificial volume.

DeepBook mitigates governance capture by limiting rules setting to simple parameters. For example, while traders can vote for cheaper fees, that vote would apply to all fee schedules, eliminating the potential for targeted fee schedules that only benefit certain users. Further checking governance capture, governance rights do not increase at a linear rate in relation to stake quantity, with staking amounts delivering decreased rights above certain thresholds. This mechanism maintains a voice for smaller traders in the system.

Full details of the DEEP token, including its allocation and flows, can be found in the DeepBook Token whitepaper.

DEEP FAQ

Was the airdrop delivered to the wallet or is it on a claim site?

A DeepBook token claim is represented by an NFT sent to a qualified user’s wallet address. Recipients will be able to unwrap the NFT and obtain DEEP tokens when the DEEP token officially launches.

How can we tell if the DBClaimNFT we received is real?

The DeepBook website and twitter account will have the address that represents the DBClaimNFT collection. 

Can I transfer or sell the DBClaimNFT?

The DBClaimNFT is a soulbound NFT, meaning it cannot be sent to another wallet address or traded. The DBClaimNFT is permanently attached to the wallet address it was sent to.

My NFT is on a wallet I can’t access, what can I do?

Unfortunately, if you have lost the private keys for the wallet which contains your DBClaimNFT you will not be able to claim your DB tokens when they are live.

When can I use my DBClaimNFT to claim tokens?

In the future, once the DEEP token officially launches, users will be able to send a transaction to unwrap their DBClaimNFT and obtain liquid DEEP tokens.

Why did you decide to create a token? What is the purpose?

The DeepBook token was created to support the aim of the DeepBook platform becoming the premier decentralized central limit order book (CLOB) for wholesale liquidity on the Sui platform. The token enables DeepBook to better provide a reliable and inexpensive layer of liquidity for protocols and professional participants on Sui to access, while also allowing that layer to be decentralized. This makes DeepBook a valuable public good to the community, providing key financial infrastructure that is inexpensive for users, benefits ecosystem-wide liquidity, and supports the rich consumer-facing DeFi platform.

What features does the token have? What is the utility?

There are four key flows for the DeepBook token: volume-based taker fees, maker incentives, stake-based participation, and staked-based governance. Please see the DeepBook token whitepaper for more details on each.

What is the distribution of the token?

Is the token mintable?

All of the tokens will be minted at the Token Generation Event (TGE) and will not be mintable into the future.

Are you able to transfer the claim to the NFT?

No, the claim NFT is soul-bound and tied to the address it was sent to.

A new command in Sui's command line interface (CLI) lets users create and execute Programmable Transaction Blocks (PTBs) directly from the terminal or a Bash script. This new command gives developers greater flexibility in implementing and executing PTBs.

PTBs give developers a very powerful programming tool not available on other blockchains. The ability to chain multiple transactions together in a single executable may be taken for granted in the wider world of software engineering, but on blockchains it represents a fundamental leap forward.  

Until now, it was only possible to work with PTBs using one of the available SDKs. Now, developers who prefer working through the terminal and writing scripts have new means of using this powerful feature.

Check out the Sui CLI PTB command documentation for details and examples. 

The example below shows the commands necessary to create a simple PTB. It creates three new coins with values

1000

, 2000 , and 3000 MIST from the gas coin, and transfers them to the address:  0x02a212de6a9dfa3a69e22387acfbafbb1a9e591bd9d636e7895dcfc8de05f331 (note the @ in front of the address to indicate this is an address and not a hexadecimal). 

sui client ptb \ --assign to_address @0x02a212de6a9dfa3a69e22387acfbafbb1a9e591bd \ --split-coins gas [1000,2000,3000] \ --assign coins \ --transfer-objects to_address [coins.0, coins.1, coins.2] \ --gas-budget 5000000 \ --summary

Here is the result message:

╭──────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮ │ PTB Execution Summary │ ├──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ Digest: 7S7XpkGns8mQ4mBUzjdM32xqNHGF2P1ErHSLbb4Chn2j │ │ Status: success │ │ Gas Cost Summary: │ │ Storage Cost: 3952000 │ │ Computation Cost: 1000000 │ │ Storage Rebate: 978120 │ │ Non-refundable Storage Fee: 9880 │ ╰──────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯

Sui CLI PTB 

The main philosophy behind CLI PTB support is to enable developers to build and execute PTBs from the command line. You can also write Bash scripts to construct and execute PTBs just as you would do from the command line, providing great flexibility when it comes to automating different tasks. 

The

sui client ptb

command accepts the following options:

sui client ptb -h Build, preview, and execute programmable transaction blocks. Depending on your shell, you might have to use quotes around arrays or other passed values. Use --help to see examples for how to use the core functionality of this command. Usage: sui client ptb [OPTIONS] Options: --assign <NAME> <VALUE> Assign a value to a variable name to use later in the PTB. --gas-coin <ID> The object ID of the gas coin to use. If not specified, it will try to use the first gas coin that it finds that has at least the requested gas-budget balance. --gas-budget <MIST> The gas budget for the transaction, in MIST. --make-move-vec <TYPE> <[VALUES]> Given n-values of the same type, it constructs a vector. For non objects or an empty vector, the type tag must be specified. --merge-coins <INTO_COIN> <[COIN OBJECTS]> Merge N coins into the provided coin. --move-call <PACKAGE::MODULE::FUNCTION> <TYPE> <FUNCTION_ARGS> Make a move call to a function. --split-coins <COIN> <[AMOUNT]> Split the coin into N coins as per the given array of amounts. --transfer-objects <TO> <[OBJECTS]> Transfer objects to the specified address. --publish <MOVE_PACKAGE_PATH> Publish the Move package. It takes as input the folder where the package exists. --upgrade <MOVE_PACKAGE_PATH> Upgrade the move package. It takes as input the folder where the package exists. --preview Preview the list of PTB transactions instead of executing them. --summary Show only a short summary (digest, execution status, gas cost). Do not use this flag when you need all the transaction data and the execution effects. --warn-shadows Enable shadow warning when the same variable name is declared multiple times. Off by default. --json Return command outputs in json format. -h, --help Print help (see more with '--help')

Concepts and features 

Besides using existing traditional PTB-related concepts, there are a few new concepts needed for this command.  

Reuse results or custom defined variables using the --assign command. 

Preview the input commands in the PTB instead of executing the PTB. 

Warn on declaring a variable with the same identifier multiple times. 

Benefit from name resolution for common packages such as sui, std, and deepbook (instead of using their addresses).

Error messages provide a concise and precise explanation of what is wrong in the PTB syntax.

Variable names cannot be address, bool, vector, some, none, gas, u8, u16, u32, u64, u128, or u256.

Examples 

Let’s dig through some examples to showcase the Sui CLI PTB tool's power. Note that these examples were tested using Bash, and your mileage might vary depending on your shell and how it treats and parses strings and quotes (e.g., you might need to use quotation marks around arrays in zsh or fish, but not in Bash).

Nested or multi-types 

When you need to work with nested types, you can simply wrap the types you need in

<

and >. For example, if an argument expects an Option<vector<u256>> you can write std::option::Option<vector<u256>>>.

Here is an example:

sui client ptb --make-move-vec "<std::option::Option<vector<u256>>>" "[vector[]]" \--gas-budget 5000000

If you need to pass multiple types for a call, you can do so by using a comma between the types, as in

<u64,u8,bool,string>

.

Name resolution 

CLI PTB uses name resolution for common packages like

sui

, std, and deepbook, so you can use them directly instead of their addresses: 0x2, 0x1, or 0xdee9. You can still use the traditional package::module::function way to call a specific function. For example, you can use both std::option or 0x1::option. 

sui client ptb \ --assign A none \ --move-call std::option::is_none "<u64>" A \ --gas-budget 5000000

You can also refer to addresses in your local wallet by their alias instead of their full address. 

Assign data to variables

The

--assign

argument binds values to variables. There are two ways you can use it: 

Assign a value to a variable: 

sui client ptb \ --assign myvar 100 \ --gas-budget 5000000

Assign a variable to the result of the previous transaction. In the following example, split-coins results in three new objects, which will be accessible via the coins variable due to the usage of --assign. 

sui client ptb \ --split-coins gas "[1000,2000,3000]" \ --assign coins \ --gas-budget 5000000

Assign a variable to a different variable

sui client ptb \  --assign myvar vector[100, 200] \  --assign my_addr @0x0fe375fff0ee40d20c54a7f2478b9b5c7eaa3625b761 \  --assign old_address my_addr \  --gas-budget 5000000

Publish package and call function 

In the Sui repository, the first package example is a simple Move project. In a nutshell, this example publishes that package, which creates a

Forge

object that you can use to create swords with the new_sword function. The code below assumes that you have a Sui Testnet environment set up and sufficient gas for your address. 

First, access the example folder and publish the package. 

cd sui/examples/move/first_package sui client ptb --move-call sui::tx_context::sender \ --assign "sender" \ --publish "." \ --assign upgrade_cap \ --transfer-objects [upgrade_cap] sender \ --gas-budget 50000000

Publishing this package results in the following transaction data:

INCLUDING DEPENDENCY Sui INCLUDING DEPENDENCY MoveStdlib BUILDING first_package Successfully verified dependencies on-chain against source. ╭──────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮ │ PTB Execution Summary │ ├──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ Digest: 8ULSyjJXhX5CPiEge3a7T2kLSA3YA8V44BAGZPdknJ1h │ │ Status: success                                  │ │ Gas Cost Summary:                                │ │ Storage Cost: 9978800                         │ │ Computation Cost: 1000000                     │ │ Storage Rebate: 978120                        │ │ Non-refundable Storage Fee: 9880              │ ╰──────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯

From the previous result, we can use the digest and pass it to

sui client tx-digest

to find the packageId and the objectId for the Forge object. We want to forge a new sword and transfer it to the sender of this transaction. 

Next, we look up the function

new_sword

from the package we published to understand what arguments we need to pass to the function. Its signature is:

/// Constructor for creating swords   public fun new_sword(       forge: &mut Forge,       magic: u64,       strength: u64,       ctx: &mut TxContext,   ): Sword 

Now that the package exists onchain, let’s use a PTB to create a sword. The first thing to do is to get the sender’s address with the

move-call

command and assign the result of that call to the sender variable. We can use assign for the magic and strength arguments, and assign the Forge object ID to the variable forge_obj.

Finally, we call the

new_sword

function through the move-call command, pass all the right function arguments, assign the result of the move-call to the sword variable, and transfer the new sword object to the sender. 

sui client ptb \ --move-call sui::tx_context::sender \ --assign sender \ --assign magic 10u64 \ --assign strength 50u64 \ --assign forge_obj @0xd5d19fde64ea43876add02efb2a769372869f30118 \ --move-call  0xbe6edeefea02371d35fdde5a45033d8d8e2e00b3eb911b23fa::example::new_sword  forge_obj magic strength \ --assign sword \ --transfer-objects "[sword]" sender \ --gas-budget 5000000 \ --summary

Because we've set the

--summary

flag, the execution result reads:

╭──────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮ │ PTB Execution Summary │ ├──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ Digest: HYqWpN9sYBGLawj4BE9VnRM7qaezUFA8aLrGBbjf72L7 │ │ Status: success │ │ Gas Cost Summary: │ │ Storage Cost: 3739200 │ │ Computation Cost: 1000000 │ │ Storage Rebate: 2309868 │ │ Non-refundable Storage Fee: 23332 │ ╰──────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯ 

PTBs in a Bash script

To facilitate automation and reusability, you can copy and paste the PTB commands from the terminal into a Bash script and run it. 

#!/usr/bin/bash  sui client ptb \  --assign to_address @0x02a212de6a9dfa3a69e22387acfbafbb1a9e59 --split-coins gas "[1000,2000,3000]" \ --assign coins \ --transfer-objects to_address "[coins.0, coins.1, coins.2]" \--gas-budget 5000000

The above code can be run as a normal Bash script.

Mint 100 NFTs and transfer them using PTBs in a Bash script

This example uses a Bash script to mint 100 NFTs and transfer them to 100 addresses. The NFT is defined in this smart contract posted to GitHub. We publish the package, and get the

num_issuer_cap

and the package IDs. The project defines the function mint in the module num, which we declare.

The script then loads the addresses from a text file where each address is on a new line. It then builds a string of

move-call

commands, calling the mint function and transferring the object to an address, all in a for loop. Finally, the PTB is executed.

Note that, being a Bash script, you can pass in environment variables as you’d do with any other Bash script.

num_issuer_cap=0x3e8a046807edd63b75014b9aff0f8dc30b76344a4dfdb1ae4655932e0514086b package=0x610834b5fa960b297a5caf6af56bcc045d67d158889da5b511a20031307ce099 module=num fun=mint echo "Loading addresses from file" readarray -t addresses < addresses.txt cmd="" for address in ${addresses[@]}; do   cmd+="--move-call $package::$module::$fun @$num_issuer_cap --assign X --transfer-objects [X] @$address " done echo "Executing PTB" sui client ptb \  $cmd \  --gas-budget 5000000000 \  --summary

The end result is:

bash-5.2$ bash working-demo.sh Loading addresses from file Executing PTB ╭──────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮ │ PTB Execution Summary │ ├──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ Digest: 7THBdpRHWSTiWExxSB7A3m9E7PDP9kQaD16N8xXevdcA │ │ Status: success │ │ Gas Cost Summary: │ │ Storage Cost: 132376800 │ │ Computation Cost: 1000000 │ │ Storage Rebate: 2392632 │ │ Non-refundable Storage Fee: 24168 │ ╰──────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯

Purchase of a domain on SuiNS 

The following example registers a Sui domain name by first creating a zero coin that has no SUI, to be used for move-call, and after that it transfers the newly created domain name object to a specific address. 

sui client ptb \ --assign suins_object_id  @0x300369e8909b9a6464da265b9a5a9ab6fe2158a040e84e808628cde7a07ee5a3 \ --split-coins gas "[0]" \ --assign zero_coin \ --move-call 0x4255184a0143c0ce4394a3f16a6f5aa5d64507269e54e51ea396d569fe8f1ba5::register::register suins_object_id '"mysui.sui"' 1u8 zero_coin @0x6 \ --assign suins_name \ --transfer-objects "[suins_name]"  @0x0fe375fff0ee40d20c54a7f2478b9b5c7eaa3625b7611f9661ec5faefb4a6fea \ --gas-budget 50000000

The result of this command is:

╭──────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮ │ PTB Execution Summary │ ├──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ Digest: 5D2W4beXGWzF4Cn69y6ihnTvoyBC99vb5zGhpxAhdq1z │ │ Status: success │ │ Gas Cost Summary:                              │ │ Storage Cost: 10039600                        │ │ Computation Cost: 1000000 │ │ Storage Rebate: 5394708         │ │ Non-refundable Storage Fee: 54492             │ ╰──────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯

Preview a PTB instead of executing 

The

--preview

flag, useful for complex PTBs, lists the transactions in the PTB instead of executing it. The preview displays a well-formatted table with each transaction and its arguments after parsing the entire input. It also displays any errors. This helps when dealing with complex PTBs, as it will produce the list of transactions instead of executing the PTB. 

sui client ptb \ --assign to_address @0x02a212de6a9dfa3a69e22387acfbafbb1a9e59 \ --split-coins gas [1000,2000,3000] \ --assign coins \ --transfer-objects to_address [coins.0, coins.1, coins.2] \ --gas-budget 5000000 \ --summary \ --preview

And the result of this call would be the following: 

Click image to expand it. Warnings and errors 

When using the

--assign

command and the --warn-shadows flag, the tool issues a warning when it encounters shadowed variables. That is, if there are multiple declarations for a given variable name, the tool warns the developer that the same variable is declared multiple times. Here is an example:

sui client ptb \  --assign a 10 \  --assign a 15 \  --gas-budget 5000000 \  --warn-shadows 

The image below shows the warnings produced when building a PTB: 

Click image to expand it.

 One area where we dedicated a lot of effort is on how to report useful errors. We aimed for errors to include sufficient information about what is wrong, pointing exactly to the argument that leads to that error, and in some cases even providing a hint on how to fix it.  

For example, if the user calls the

std::Option::is_none

function and passes the module name with an uppercase instead of lowercase, the tool will produce the following message: 

sui client ptb \   --move-call std::Option::is_none none \  --gas-budget 5000000

And the error message will show the following: 

Click image to expand it.

 Here is another example which showcases the error produced when the user calls

--assign X

without passing a variable, after a command that does not produce any result: 

sui client ptb \  --assign X \  --gas-budget 5000000

The error in this case would be the following:

Click image to expand it.

 Here is a another example regarding reserved words in the tool: 

sui client ptb --assign address 5 --gas-budget 5

The error message here would show:

Click image to expand it.

Tencent Cloud now supports Sui developers with a new RPC service. The company, a major cloud services provider, offers high throughput and batching for Web3 apps.

Launching its blockchain-specific RPC service in September, 2023, Tencent Cloud includes Ethereum, Polygon, and Solana. The addition of Sui will let builders push the envelope of blockchain performance, combining Sui's record-setting transactions-per-second and Tencent Cloud's RPC throughput, which can reach up to 18,000 requests-per-second. 

Developers interested in exploring Tencent Cloud's packages can begin with a free trial, supporting a single app and 1,800 requests-per-second. Paid services offer greater batching, more throughput, and metrics reporting. 

Tencent Cloud's Sui support gives developers the ability to write complex enterprise apps that scale, reaching users around the world with no bottlenecks.

Revolut, the global all-in-one finance platform, unveiled its latest Crypto Learn course in collaboration with Sui. With over 40 million users worldwide, Revolut offers a comprehensive suite of digital banking products and services, including the ability to buy and sell cryptocurrencies, including SUI. 

Revolut's Learn program educates its users about Sui, giving an introduction to the technology and what sets it apart from other blockchains. An incentivisation program encourages users to explore all facets of Sui.

Opening doors to blockchain education

As Sui continues to pave the way for blockchain technology innovation and adoption, its strategic partnership with Revolut creates an opportunity to introduce millions of digital banking users to the world of blockchain technology.

"Our collaboration with Sui underscores Revolut’s commitment to providing our users with access to the latest advancements in financial technology," said Kotryna Baldovskaja, Crypto Global Business Development Manager at Revolut. "By integrating Sui's educational content into our Learn program, we aim to equip our users with knowledge about one of the most impressive technological breakthroughs we’ve seen in crypto and the countless opportunities that lie within the Sui ecosystem."

A guided journey into Sui

Revolut's Learn platform serves as the gateway for Revolut users to delve into the intricacies of Sui. Together, Revolut and the Sui Foundation curated a series of captivating lessons designed to guide users through the unique value propositions of Sui. 

In the first two lessons, users explore the distinctive features and benefits of Sui technology, gaining insights into how Sui sets itself apart from the typical standards of blockchain platforms. The subsequent lessons explore the power of Sui’s uniquely smooth user experience while highlighting important use cases, introducing users to the vibrant Sui ecosystem and its wide array of applications.

Revolut users have access to Sui courses within the Learn program and can earn rewards for completion. Begin learning about Sui on Revolut

Through the Crypto Learn program, Revolut users not only expand their knowledge of Sui and blockchain technology but also have the opportunity to earn SUI tokens for their efforts. By completing educational modules, users can unlock exciting rewards, further incentivizing their journey into the world of decentralized finance and encouraging engagement with Sui's thriving ecosystem. Note that rewards are limited to specific jurisdictions and may not be available for all Revolut users.

Download Revolut and learn about Sui today! Stay tuned for further updates as Revolut and Sui continue to innovate and empower users on their journey into the future of finance.

Note: This content is for general educational and informational purposes only and should not be construed or relied upon as an endorsement or recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any asset, investment or financial product and does not constitute financial, legal, or tax advice.

In the ever-evolving landscape of gaming, innovation is the key to capturing players' attention and keeping them engaged. As we look ahead to the rest of this year, five upcoming games on Sui promise to highlight the possibilities of Web3 gaming. By implementing powerful blockchain technology and immersive storytelling, these games are poised to set new standards for what gamers can expect.

E4C: Final Salvation

E4C: Final Salvation brings a fresh take on the Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) genre, incorporating mobile-native innovations and blockchain technology. Developed by Ambrus Studios, this game offers fast-paced, competitive matches while allowing players to customize and personalize their in-game assets. By leveraging Sui's blockchain technology, players can collect in-game currency and valuable items that can be exchanged for NFTs, weapons, and heroes, an ownership experience unlike anything else. With its strategic gameplay and immersive features, E4C: Final Salvation redefines the MOBA experience.

While E4C: Final Salvation is under development, players can now enjoy its prequel, E4C: Fallen Arena, on PC or Mac. Fallen Arena features the same IP and artwork from Ambrus Studios’ NFT series, the E4C Rangers. In-game assets, including customizable skins, will be recorded as Sui assets onchain, enabling players to earn currency and items exchangeable for Ranger NFTs, weapons, and heroes that will be available to be used in E4C: Final Salvation as well.

E4C: Fallen Arena is available to play for everyone today. Pebble City

Pebble City is not just a casino game; it's a vibrant social experience set in a multi-casino system. Each casino within Pebble City offers a unique theme and storyline, providing players with endless opportunities for exploration and adventure. From space-themed casinos to intense face-offs against other players, Pebble City promises excitement at every turn. By participating in community games and trying out different slots, players can tailor their casino experience to suit their preferences. With its immersive gameplay and social elements, Pebble City is set to revolutionize the online casino industry.

The Walking Dead Lands

Orange Comet's The Walking Dead Lands brings the iconic world of AMC's television series to life in a thrilling third-person shooter game. Players must navigate through a zombie-ridden landscape, using a variety of weapons to survive. With rich visuals and immersive gameplay powered by Unreal Engine, The Walking Dead Lands will deliver an action-packed experience that fans of the series won't want to miss.

Read more about how The Walking Dead Lands is using Sui technology.

Cosmocadia

Cosmocadia is a casual farming game where players collaborate with the Cosmocadians on their island to gather resources and construct the ultimate utopia. Cosmocadia immerses players in a simple yet engaging landscape where they navigate their NFT avatars to complete quests and engage in farming activities. Players earn in-game currency to further develop their island and customize their avatars and surroundings. With its blend of casual gameplay and immersive features, Cosmocadia promises to provide entertainment and creative exploration for players of all ages.

Read more on how Cosmocadia utilizes unique elements of Sui NFTs.

Users explore the land to collect items, build structures, and play with friends on Cosmoscadia. BRICK POP

BRICK POP, developed by ONBUFF, offers a casual and fun arcade-style experience where players use shooting balls to clear bricks. What sets BRICK POP apart from a typical arcade-style game is its integration of Sui technology, allowing users to create and exchange value through gameplay. Each game session is represented by an NFT, which is updated during gameplay and used to rank in leaderboards. With its addictive gameplay and innovative use of blockchain technology, BRICK POP is set to captivate players of all ages. Learn more about how BRICK POP utilizes Sui technology. 

ONBUFF is also helping to develop Samurai Shodown, an onchain game based on the game Samurai Shodown: The Legend of the Light Moon, which is targeted to launch this year.

Game on

The future of Web3 gaming is bright, with innovative titles on Sui like E4C: Final Salvation, Pebble City, The Walking Dead Lands, BRICK POP, and Cosmocadia leading the way. By leveraging blockchain technology, immersive storytelling, and social elements, these games are redefining gaming in the digital age. As they prepare for release this year, gamers everywhere can look forward to a new era of gaming experiences that are more immersive, interactive, and rewarding than ever before.

Note: This content is for general educational and informational purposes only and should not be construed or relied upon as an endorsement or recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any asset, investment or financial product and does not constitute financial, legal, or tax advice.

Are you ready to be a part of the next wave of innovation? Gear up for Sui Overflow, Sui's first global hackathon, where the brightest minds converge to push the boundaries of what's possible on Sui. With seven compelling tracks to choose from, there's a path for every innovator at Sui Overflow. While registration opens on April 21st, we encourage you to begin building your project today!

Sui Overflow presents the largest hackathon reward pool ever for the Sui ecosystem. Compete for over $500,000 USD in prizes as you showcase your work on a global stage.

0:00 / 0:47 1× Hackathon Tracks

Sui Overflow offers a selection of four tracks for those building in a particular product category and three tracks that focus on leveraging Sui technology. Participants can submit a single project under both a product track and a Sui technology track that aligns with their project's goals. For example, a team building a DeFi project utilizing innovative Move features may submit their project under both the DeFi and Move tracks. 

Teams are encouraged to begin work on their projects before registration opens. Work that has occurred within 60 days prior to registration is eligible to be part of a hackathon project. So if you’ve started building something after February 20, 2024 and think it is appropriate for the hackathon, you are welcome to continue building it and submit it for the hackathon.

From revolutionizing DeFi apps to creating immersive gaming experiences, anything is possible. Consider building new tools for developers, groundbreaking NFT functionality, or developing a mobile app where users don’t even know they’re using blockchain technology. Think outside the box and explore how you can leverage Sui’s unique features to shape the future of Web3.

DeFi

DeFi on Sui is booming! Build the next generation of DeFi apps utilizing Sui’s unique architecture and powerful primitives, like Programmable Transaction Blocks. Whether it is yield aggregation, trading bot infrastructure, liquidity management dashboards, or something entirely different, we’re eager to see what you will build.

Gaming

Excited about gaming? Join the Play Beyond revolution and see how Sui offers a drastically different Web3 gaming experience. Craft games or gaming-related tools that showcase what is possible on Sui with dynamic NFTs, zkLogin integration, and more. When it comes to gaming, the options are endless – whether it's casual mini-games, racing epics, or platformer adventures, there's plenty of room to unleash your creativity and #playbeyond the ordinary.

Consumer and Mobile

Empower the next generation of users to embrace Web3. Leverage Sui's unique features to simplify blockchain usage in consumer apps, whether it's social media, e-commerce, mobile payments, productivity tools, health and fitness, food delivery, marketplaces, video streaming, or freelancing. Leveraging Sui primitives such as zkLogin and sponsored transactions, developers can create best-in-class user experiences. Join us in shaping the future of consumer-facing apps on Sui.

Infra and Tooling

Fuel the Sui ecosystem and supercharge Sui developer productivity with new tools and infrastructure. From no-code asset creation platforms to DAO tooling, the power is yours to equip builders and streamline development on Sui. Develop web IDEs, useful CLIs, or even end-to-end app testing tools. Build the foundations for a thriving ecosystem and leave your mark on Sui's infrastructure and tools.

Move

Calling all Move wizards! Show off your prowess by crafting clever design patterns, contributing useful libraries, or developing novel apps leveraging Move's composability superpowers. Take the path of developing apps utilizing powerful features specific to Move on Sui like transfer to object, or delve into creating new tools for testing and hardening Move code, or even those that enhance the quality of life for Move developers. Whether you're a seasoned expert or a newcomer to Move, there's ample opportunity to showcase your creativity and innovation.

Randomness

Participants who are seeking to add a splash of randomness into the ecosystem are encouraged to create libraries that build powerful new utilities, algorithms, or data structures on top of Sui’s Move random module. Whether it's for DeFi, gaming, games of chance (e.g. fortune tellers, horoscope, lottery, random number generators) or something entirely unique, explore the myriad possibilities of leveraging randomness to enhance engagement, fun, and security on Sui.

zkLogin

Unlock seamless experiences with zkLogin and develop apps that utilize zkLogin in new and exciting ways. Whether it's creating interoperability tools (e.g., a portal that allows users to keep track of all their zkLogin addresses and provide a wallet-like view of all owned objects) or using zkLogin and zkSend in traditional Web2 apps, all new uses of zkLogin are welcome. Explore the untapped potential of zkLogin and help revolutionize blockchain user experiences.

Ecosystem Bounties

Outside of the seven tracks listed above, Sui Overflow will also feature a plethora of bounties created and sponsored by existing Sui ecosystem projects that encourage participants to build upon those projects and leverage composability within Sui. Ecosystem bounties will feature their own prize pools and have their own requirements; hackathon teams can potentially qualify for both track prizes and ecosystem bounties with one submission. 

More details will be released on ecosystem bounties closer to the registration opening date. 

Basecamp Pitch and Polish session

Join us at Sui Basecamp for an opportunity to refine your Sui Overflow hackathon project at the Basecamp Pitch and Polish session. Whether you’re in the ideation phase or fine-tuning your MVP, this session offers a supportive and collaborative environment to perfect your project. 

While participation is fully optional and not required for Sui Overflow participants, those that are available are encouraged to take advantage of this valuable opportunity. Secure your spot as time slots are limited and allocated on a first-come, first-serve basis. Don’t miss this chance to polish your pitch and increase the impact of your project.

Road to Sui Overflow

Begin the Road to Sui Overflow with our workshop series and in-person events tailored to equip developers for the hackathon. Hosted by expert engineers, these online sessions delve deep into the intricacies of Sui technology, offering valuable insights and practical guidance. Whether you’re a seasoned Move developer seeking updates or a newcomer eager to explore the potential of Sui, these workshops will provide an invaluable learning experience to sharpen your skills and deepen your understanding.

Stay updated with the latest on the Road to Sui Overflow by regularly checking on the website and following along in the Sui Overflow Discord server.

Start hacking now and stay in the Loop

Devs can start building now for Sui Overflow. For those who plan to participate in the Sui Overflow Hackathon, make sure to pre-register and sign up for updates with your email at the Sui Overflow website, and join the dedicated Sui Overflow Discord server. Here, you can connect with potential teammates, brainstorm ideas, and stay updated on timelines, judges, tracks, and get tips on how to win, all while having any of your questions answered promptly. 

Official registration opens on April 21st but we encourage you to start building today! 

Join us at Sui Overflow and let your creativity surge!

Note: This content is for general educational and informational purposes only and should not be construed or relied upon as an endorsement or recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any asset, investment or financial product and does not constitute financial, legal, or tax advice.

Pilotfish, the first multi-machine smart contract execution engine, enables Sui network validators to use multiple machines and autoscale to execute more transactions when the load increases. This is achieved without compromising reliability or feature completeness. 

Pilotfish recovers from failures of internal execution machines and supports the Sui's full dynamic operations. Its streaming architecture leads to a very low latency overhead. Our performance evaluations of the Pilotfish integration with Sui demonstrate an up to eight times throughput increase when using eight servers for execution, demonstrating linear scaling for compute-bound loads. 

The challenge of execution

Lazy blockchains are a promising emerging design architecture that decouples transaction ordering (consensus) and execution. In this design, an ordering layer sequences transactions, and then, at a later time, an execution layer executes the transaction sequence. This enables state-of-the-art blockchain systems to order a large number of transactions (on the order of 100,000 transactions per second), using modern consensus algorithms such as Bullshark and Hammerhead. However, execution performance has been lagging behind, and nowadays execution is the bottleneck. For example, the Ethereum virtual machine is reported to peak at only 20,000 transactions per second when executing simple transactions.

Batching: A high-latency solution

One solution to the execution bottleneck is batching. By constructing batches or blocks of a large number of transactions and submitting them as a unit to be executed, it is possible to achieve high throughput without major changes to the architecture. However, batching comes at the cost of high latency. It is not uncommon for batched execution to have latency in the hundreds of milliseconds, which is non-negligible for low-latency blockchains such as Sui. 

Pilotfish achieves high throughput while only introducing a negligible latency overhead, in the range of tens of milliseconds rather than hundreds, following the established stream-processing approach already employed in Sui for multi-core execution.

Scaling up versus scaling out

One way to achieve high throughput while keeping latency low is scaling up. Parallel transaction execution on a single machine, and some blockchains, including Sui, successfully employ this model. It has the advantage of not requiring huge architectural changes. The validator is already entirely located on a single machine, making it just a question of executing the transaction in parallel instead of sequentially while preserving transaction causality. 

With the scale up approach, once the current load is beyond what your current machine can handle, your only choice is to upgrade to a more powerful machine. But this solution has a limited runway. There are only so many CPU cores that can fit in a server, so much RAM, etc. So if the load keeps growing, eventually it will be beyond the means of any single machine to keep up. Adding insult to injury, it is not only the CPU that might be exhausted but any single resource of the machine. Even if the current validator machine is not saturated CPU-wise for the current load, it might run out of RAM capacity and be forced to rely on slow persistent storage, thus slowing down the entire pipeline. Finally, relying on single powerful machines is unfriendly to the blockchain space, as beefy machines are rare and supported by only a few data-center providers. 

The only other way to solve the execution bottleneck, which Pilotfish pioneers in the blockchain space, is scaling out through distributed transaction execution on multiple machines. The advantage of the scale out approach is that it has the potential to scale indefinitely. When load increases beyond the capacity of the current number of machines, we can just spin up more machines, essentially guaranteeing that we never run out of capacity and never have to resort to slow, persistent storage on the critical path. Another advantage of this approach is that it is orthogonal to, and compatible with, the scale up approach. Finally, it also allows for easier decentralization, preventing hardware provider “monoculture.” There is a larger market for multiple small machines than for single super-powerful machines.

How Pilotfish works

Here is how Pilotfish distributes transaction execution on multiple machines. Each validator is internally split into three logical roles: (1) the Primary, which handles consensus, (2) SequencingWorkers (SWs), which store transactions and dispatch them for execution; and (3) ExecutionWorkers (EWs), which store the blockchain state and execute transactions received from the SWs. 

A potential Pilotfish deployment uses a Primary, along with three SequencingWorkers and three ExecutionWorkers.

Each of these roles is instantiated on one or more machines, except for the Primary, which is always a single machine. Note that the machines that compose a validator trust each other (they are run by the same entity), so they do not need heavyweight Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) protocols to coordinate. Only the Primary requires BFT, when it interacts with other nodes.

What allows Pilotfish to scale is that SWs and EWs shard the state. Each transaction is assigned to a single SW and each blockchain object is assigned to a single EW. Note that this is not the same as inter-validator sharding, in which validators are assigned different subsets of the state. In Pilotfish, all validators are assigned the entire state, and the sharding happens inside each validator that uses many machines.

In a perfect world, each transaction would only access objects from a single shard, so distributing transaction execution would be as simple as dispatching each transaction to its proper EW shard. However, in the real world, transactions will often access objects from more than one shard. To handle such cross-shard transactions, Pilotfish EWs exchange object data on a per-needed basis, so that the EW designated to execute a given transaction always has the required object data before it starts executing.

In this example deployment of Pilotfish, one SW and three EWs process transactions received by the Primary.

In the diagram above, the Primary interacts with the primaries of other validators to order transactions (➊). The SW receives the transaction ordering information from the primary and dispatches transactions to the appropriate EWs (➋). In our example above, the current transaction T accesses input objects from shards EW1 and EW3, so the SW only dispatches T to those EWs. Then EW1 and EW3 each schedule T against other transactions that may conflict with T (more about our scheduling algorithm in the full paper) (➌). Once T is ready to execute, EW1 and EW3 send the appropriate object data to the designated executor of T (in this case the designated executor is EW1, so only EW3 needs to send objects). Once EW1 has all the required object data, it executes T (➍) and sends the output effects to all EWs. Each EW applies locally changes to objects it owns (➎).

Beyond the basics

Besides this basic transaction flow, read our full paper to find out:

How we schedule transactions to allow parallel execution of non-conflicting transactions.

How we handle and recover from shard crashes.

How we enable reads and writes over dynamic fields.

A quick look at our results

Here we have a quick look at the experimental results. The paper contains full details of the experimental setup and results. 

In the latency versus throughput graph below, each data point represents an experimental run in which the SequencingWorker submits transactions at a fixed rate for a duration of five minutes. We experimentally increase the load of transactions sent to the system and record the median throughput and latency of executed transactions. As a result, all plots illustrate the steady state latency of all systems under low load as well as the maximal throughput they can serve, after which latency grows quickly. This is the throughput at which the latency shoots up to over 20 milliseconds.

We emphasize that, in all experiments, transactions are submitted for execution individually, as they arrive in a streaming fashion, without being batched. This is especially important to Sui, which processes fast-path transactions asynchronously as soon as they are certified, before they are batched in a consensus commit. Pilotfish alo supports batching, which significantly increases throughput but (of course) also leads to higher latency.

In this first workload, each transaction is a simple transfer of coins from one address to another. We generate the transactions such that no two transactions conflict. Each transaction operates on a different set of objects from the other transactions. Thus, this workload is completely parallelizable. 

Latency versus throughput with simple transfers: Pilotfish preserves low latency (<20 milliseconds).

We observe that for any number of execution workers (EW), Pilotfish maintains a low sub-20 millisecond latency envelope. Significantly, we also observe that the per-transaction latency decreases as we add more EWs. At a low 6 to 7 millisecond latency the eight EW configuration processes five to six times more individual transfers than the one EW configuration.

Note that latency exhibits a linear increase as the workload grows for a single ExecutionWorker, primarily because of the effects of transaction queuing. More specifically, a single machine does not have enough cores to fully exploit the parallelism of the workload, so some transactions have to wait to get scheduled. This effect no longer exists for higher numbers of ExecutionWorkers, illustrating that adding more hardware has a beneficial effect on the service time by lowering execution latency.

Pilotfish’s scalability is not perfectly linear in this workload. In particular, the marginal improvement in throughput decreases after two ExecutionWorkers. This is due to the computationally light simple transfer workload and throughput not being compute-bound. Thus, adding more CPU resources no longer improves performance proportionally. The next graph, shown below, illustrates the advantages of increasing the number of ExecutionWorkers when the workload is compute-bound.

To illustrate the effect of computational intensity, we add some synthetic computation to each transaction. For simplicity, we use iterative Fibonacci computation as our synthetic computation. Ror example, in the graph below, “Fib-2500” means that each transaction computes the 2,500th Fibonacci number. The graph shows how the maximum throughput of Pilotfish scales with the number of EWs for three levels of computational intensity (Fib-2500 is the lowest and Fib-10000 is the highest). As a baseline, we include the performance of the Sui baseline, which runs on a single machine and cannot take advantage of additional hardware. 

As the graph shows, in this case, the throughput of Pilotfish scales linearly with the number of EWs available, up to eight times throughput with eight EWs, which is close to ideal. 

Scalability with a computationally intensive workload: Pilotfish can scale linearly when compute is the bottleneck. What’s next?

For now, Pilotfish is a proof-of-concept that shows it is possible to achieve good scale-out execution scalability in lazy blockchains, without compromising latency. In particular, we show that a highly distributed executor leads to low latency execution and higher throughput, even for simple transfers. Furthermore, for compute-intensive smart contracts we demonstrate a near ideal increase in throughput as we add more execution resources. 

Pilotfish opens up the way for cheaper computation in smart contracts, free of concerns that the execution of one CPU-bound contract would interfere negatively with other smart contracts.

In the next iteration, we plan to also implement and test support for more than one SW, shard replication and crash-recovery, and support for ultra-fast remote direct memory access networking. We are working on improving our prototype by adding these features and improving its end-to-end performance through engineering optimizations.

From zkLogin to Programmable Transaction Blocks, Sui primitives give game developers the tools to finally leverage the power of Web3, giving players new experiences and engagement in the games they love. Previous blockchains were technically limited in how they could support onchain gaming, but Sui offers the performance and efficiency developers need.

And the timing couldn't be more ripe, as industry trends point towards onchain gaming momentum in 2024. A report by Delphi Digital cites a new wave of investment and interest, incentivizing studios to delve deeper into how Web3 and blockchain technology cater to the demands of gamers.

Although these Sui primitives serve a variety of use cases, including DeFi and real world assets, they will have a profound impact on onchain gaming. Their synergistic combination showcases a collective capability in enhancing user engagement and experience within the Sui gaming ecosystem.

zkLogin: Simplifying onboarding for gamers

At the forefront of enhancing user accessibility lies zkLogin, a revolutionary solution addressing the onboarding challenges faced by new gamers venturing into blockchain-based gaming. The cumbersome process of creating and managing new blockchain accounts often deters potential users. However, zkLogin streamlines this process by enabling gamers to securely authenticate and conduct transactions using their existing Web2 credentials.

This seamless integration with Web2 login credentials not only simplifies onboarding but also fosters a more inclusive environment, catering to gamers of varying levels of blockchain knowledge. By abstracting away blockchain interactions from users, zkLogin significantly enhances the accessibility and usability of onchain games within the Sui ecosystem.

Sponsored transactions: Eliminating gas fee friction

Sui tackles the burden of blockchain gas fees through sponsored transactions, a primitive alleviating a common onboarding barrier for new users. Traditionally, requiring users to pay fees in the native coin of the underlying blockchain poses a significant barrier to entry for apps. However, sponsored transactions empower game developers to subsidize specific user transactions, abstracting gas fees away from the end-user experience.

This innovative approach not only reduces onboarding friction but also provides developers with granular control over gas fee subsidization. As opposed to making users pay gas fees as they play a game, developers can enable tried and true revenue models, such as ad-support, subscriptions, and freemium.

Programmable Transaction Blocks: Streamlining interactions

Programmable Transaction Blocks (PTBs) dramatically simplify blockchain interactions for both gamers and developers. By enabling the bundling, signing, and submission of complex transactions in a unified process, PTBs streamline interactions within onchain games. This seamless execution of multiple transactions in a single block enhances user experience by ensuring cohesive and atomic processes, mitigating the risk of transaction failures midway through a series of desired interactions.

PTBs empower game developers to create intricate gaming experiences involving multiple apps and interactions within a single transaction block, requiring a single interaction from the user. This fosters a more immersive and seamless gaming environment on Sui.

Sui Kiosk: Empowering asset control in gaming

Sui Kiosk empowers gamers to retain full control over their in-game assets, even when listed for sale. In traditional gaming environments, users often relinquish ownership-related abilities when trading assets. However, Sui Kiosk facilitates the transfer of asset ownership while allowing creators to define specific policies for asset trading.

For developers, Sui Kiosk can power an in-game store where characters purchase equipment, or an ecosystem-level trading system where players buy and sell items they find in-game. Developers get to define the trading functionalities and even determine how items function outside of the game. By eliminating the need for additional layers or third-party services, Sui Kiosk simplifies asset trading within onchain games on Sui.

Unlocking the potential of onchain gaming on Sui

Sui's innovative primitives are poised to revolutionize the landscape of onchain gaming, offering unparalleled user experiences and fostering a vibrant gaming ecosystem. From simplifying onboarding with zkLogin to eliminating gas fee friction through sponsored transactions, Sui provides an environment for developers to create immersive and frictionless gaming experiences. With PTBs streamlining interactions and Kiosk empowering asset control, Sui is redefining the standard of onchain gaming. 

Stay tuned for upcoming improvements and new Sui primitives, as the journey towards a new era of onchain gaming continues on Sui!

Note: This content is for general educational and informational purposes only and should not be construed or relied upon as an endorsement or recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any asset, investment or financial product and does not constitute financial, legal, or tax advice.

Our new game, BrickPop, combines Sui’s seamless blockchain technology with low gas fees and our expertise in Web3 game development. By leveraging the strengths of Sui and our own INNO platform, BrickPop offers players an immersive gaming experience that merges cutting-edge technology with captivating gameplay. Designed for real-time transactions and high user engagement, BrickPop lets users create and exchange value directly through gameplay.

Sui's next-generation blockchain platform, known for its high-speed processing, scalability, and efficiency, offers excellent support for the kind of real-time gameplay we envisioned with BrickPop. These technical features play a crucial role for BrickPop's high user interaction.

At ONBUFF, we create new value through the fusion of game development and blockchain technology. BrickPop reflects this philosophy by offering users a new experience where they can directly create and exchange value through gameplay. Leveraging the object-based development features of the Sui blockchain, ONBUFF processes and records all interactions and changes within the game in real-time. This ensures transparency in the game and provides a foundation for players to truly own and exchange the value they generate in the game.

BrickPop's fast-paced gameplay requires Sui's high performance to deliver player satisfaction. Onchain gameplay

Every time a user shoots the ball in the game, it triggers a transaction that updates the game object status. The outcome of the game is then preserved as an NFT, which the player owns and can trade. To facilitate this process, players need to connect their Sui wallet to their account on our INNO platform. This connection is necessary to cover the gas fees associated with playing the game and minting the resulting NFT.

The user’s gameplay results are displayed in real-time on the leaderboard. Based on daily rankings, users receive Act tokens as rewards. These Act tokens enable participation in INNO Platform’s airdrop events.

BrickPop saves each game as an NFT and rewards players with Act tokens. BrickPop contract structures

BrickPop's technical depth is particularly emphasized through three key contract data structures:

PlayerBoard

, Round, and LeaderBoard. These structures play a crucial role in the real-time management of game states, recording player achievements, and accurately managing competition between players. These contracts ensure that all interactions within the game are processed transparently and reliably, allowing players to perceive their progress.

PlayerBoard structures

Within the game, the

PlayerBoard

data structure serves as a repository for the user’s progress and performance tracking. It encompasses key fields, including:

player

: This field captures the user’s contract address, indicating ownership of the corresponding NFT.

current_board

: Here, the user’s current stage status is stored, providing a snapshot of their progress within the game.

Upon completing gameplay, users are ranked based on their highest achieved score. This rank is recorded alongside an image URL (

image_url

), visually depicting the user’s position. Additionally, users have access to their gameplay history in their wallet, empowering them to review and reflect on their progress and achievements over time.

struct PlayerBoard has key, store { id: UID, board_num: u64, player: address, current_board: Round, image_url: Url }

Round structures

Within the game framework, the

Round

data structure monitors each instance of the shooting ball, encompassing key fields such as:

stage

: This crucial field dynamically logs the current game stage in real-time, offering insight into the player’s progress within the game.

last_update_date

: This field plays a pivotal role in recording the latest timestamp of the shooting ball, effectively capturing the last instance of player activity.

The

Round

data structure serves as a comprehensive repository, meticulously documenting every attempt and outcome. By analyzing this data, the game gains valuable insights into the player’s gameplay patterns, ultimately enhancing the overall gaming experience for the user.

struct Round has store, copy, drop { stage: u64, last_update_date: u64 }

LeaderBoard structures

The

LeaderBoard

data structure serves as a cornerstone in fostering healthy competition among players, featuring essential fields such as:

rank

: This pivotal field meticulously records players’ ranks alongside their attained stage statuses, providing a comprehensive overview of their performance within the competitive system.

maxRankCoun

: Here, the maximum number of players displayed on the LeaderBoard is determined. For instance, setting it to 10 ensures that it only showcases the top 10 players.

Through the

LeaderBoard

data structure, players are empowered to compare their progress with peers, fostering a sense of camaraderie and motivation to ascend to higher stages. This competitive environment not only encourages prolonged gameplay but also amplifies the overall enjoyment and engagement for players.

struct Leaderboard has key, store { id: UID, ranks: venctor<RankBoard>, maxRankCount: u64, minStage: u64 }

Leveraging Sui

The utilization of Sui blockchain technology in BrickPop is integral to the core of the game. All transactions occurring during gameplay are recorded on the blockchain, securely storing each player’s game progress, achievements, and acquired NFTs. This allows players to verify their accomplishments and perceive their in-game activities as having tangible value.

Furthermore, this technology ensures fair management of competition among players through the game’s leaderboard system, distributing rewards transparently and reliably.

Revolutionizing the gaming experience

The combination of ONBUFF and Sui blockchain technology creates a new form of gaming experience through BrickPop. This game emphasizes both technological innovation and user engagement, providing players with deeper interactions and opportunities for value creation.

Such innovation not only impacts the gaming industry but also extends the scope of blockchain technology applications. ONBUFF and Sui are expected to provide more diverse and enriching user experiences through this, and BrickPop serves as a testament to how technological advancements and innovative game design can be combined, offering a new direction for future game development.

The Sui Foundation is excited to unveil the awardees of the Sui Academic Research Awards. The program funds research that advances Web3 across many verticals, particularly by pushing the limits of technology related to blockchain networks, smart contract programming, and products built upon Sui.

In the last two cohorts, we approved 17 proposals from leading universities including KAIST, University College London, EPFL, and National University of Singapore.

Overview of approved proposalsDAOs: Voting-Bloc Entropy

Ari Juels (Cornell University)

Addressing the fundamental question of what it means for an organization to be decentralized, this research will establish a metric to gauge organizational decentralization. By establishing a measure of decentralization exhibited by a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), the research will identify practices that can enhance decentralization within organizations.

Adaptively-secure asynchronous DAG-based consensus

Philipp Jovanovic (University College London)

This project aims to develop an asynchronous DAG-based protocol to enhance robustness against attacks and adapt to changing adversaries. Unlike current partially synchronous models vulnerable to denial-of-service attacks and static adversaries, the proposed protocol will offer improved security and adaptability while maintaining performance levels as close as possible to its partially synchronous counterparts.

Large language model guided auditing of Sui smart contracts

Arthur Gervais (University College London)

Great improvements to Move smart contract auditing can be achieved using large language models (LLMs) like GPT-4-32k and Claude-v2-100k. Initial analysis of 52 Solidity DeFi smart contracts identified various vulnerabilities that resulted in nearly $1 billion in reported losses. This project expands this research into Sui smart contracts, emphasizing prompt engineering for robust security assessment and evaluating LLM performance using synthetic benchmark datasets.

Mapping the landscape of consensus protocols

Christopher Cachin (University of Bern)

By surveying the current landscape of consensus, this project will offer novel insights into cryptographic consensus protocols. Results will lead to better understanding of existing algorithms and to new structures for designing distributed protocols. 

A framework for high-assurance verification of decentralized oracle protocols

Giselle Reis (Carnegie Melon University) and Bruno Woltzenlogel Paleo (Djed Alliance)

Creating a framework for rigorously analyzing and verifying blockchain oracles using formal methods is essential for ensuring accurate and fair external data in smart contracts. This project builds upon prior work by extending a basic oracle protocol and business model formalized in the Coq proof management system, aiming to develop a comprehensive library of definitions and proof tactics.

Identifying scalability bottlenecks

Roger Wattenhofer (ETH Zürich)

By identifying bottlenecks stemming from smart contract design flaws, this project seeks to enhance the parallelization potential of blockchain applications. It will also explore how adjusting transaction fees can impact parallelization potential.

Mechanizing Bullshark protocol

Ilya Sergey (National University of Singapore)

This research aims to formally verify Bullshark's properties using modern computer-aided verification tools, advancing the understanding of DAG-based consensus protocols. Additionally, the project will contribute to the advancement of distributed systems research by providing the first mechanically verified models of DAG-based consensus protocols.

BBSF: The Blockchain Benchmarking Standardized Framework

Henry F. Korth (Lehigh University)

This project aims to create a blockchain benchmark standardized format for fair comparison of layer 1 blockchains, as well as layer 2 scaling solutions. Ultimately, the objective is to offer users and developers transparent insights into chain performance, facilitating informed decision-making.

Building a Scalable and Decentralized Shared Sequencing Layer

Min Suk Kang (KAIST)

The proposal will explore the use of Bullshark/Mysticeti as a shared sequencer algorithm. This will involve running multiple rollups that use Sui as the sequencing layer, allowing them to interpret transactions as per their execution layer.

Local fee markets for optimal congestion pricing

Abdoulaye Ndiaye (New York University)

This research investigates local fee markets to optimize congestion pricing, drawing parallels between congestion in transportation and transaction execution in blockchain networks. The goal is to establish efficient pricing mechanisms reflecting congestion states for optimal resource allocation. Initial analyses of user valuations and delay costs show promising directions for congestion pricing in blockchains.

SAMM: Sharded Automated Market Makers

Ittay Eyal (Technion - Israel Institute of Technology)

A new concept called sharded contracts which utilizes multiple contracts to increase concurrency is being developed. While sharding automated market maker (AMM) smart contracts can improve performance, challenges arise due to liquidity fragmentation and costlier exchange transactions. The key objective is to align incentives for liquidity providers and traders to sustain multiple AMM shards, enabling fully parallelizable sharded AMMs.

Private disclosures in competing mechanisms

Andrea Attar (University of Roma Tor Vergata - Italy)

Exploring a new approach to mechanism design in markets, this research focuses on competition among sellers to attract informed buyers. It investigates the impact of private disclosures from designers to agents on market outcomes and strategic interactions, aiming to provide insights into modern market dynamics and competition. Through theoretical analysis and empirical research, the project seeks to advance understanding of market imperfections and inform policy recommendations.

Apply large language models to generate Sui smart contracts

Ken Koedinger and Eason Chen (Carnegie Melon University)

Smart contracts on Sui are written in the Move language, posing challenges for current large language models (LLMs) due to limited training data. This research aims to address this by fine-tuning LLMs with Move code and Sui-specific prompts. This research will gather a comprehensive dataset of Move language examples, enhance prompt engineering, and implement fine-tuning, comparing LLM effectiveness across these methods. 

COMET: Comparative Metrics and Framework for Transitioning to Move

George Giaglis (University of Nicosia)

Despite extensive analysis of Solidity, the emergence of Move presents a notable shift, yet a comparative analysis between Solidity and Move remains scarce. This research will complete a comprehensive comparative analysis between Solidity and Move, facilitating a deeper understanding of Move’s features and capabilities. By organizing key elements into a framework, our objective is to empower developers to transition to developing with Move easily.

Revolutionizing DeFi: A deep learning approach to optimize liquidity and dynamic fees on Sui

Rachid Guerraoui and Walid Sofiane (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne)

This research will develop a hybrid deep learning model for optimal range predictions in Sui DeFi protocols. It combines enhanced recurrent neural networks and deep reinforcement learning, while integrating social media sentiment analysis to enhance predictive accuracy. This research seeks to improve DeFi protocols' responsiveness to market changes, positioning Sui as a leader in next-gen DeFi protocols.

Evaluate the predictive ability of SUI’s volatility

Stavros Degiannakis (Open University of Cyprus)

Evaluating model fitting and predictive ability in econometrics is critical, often relying on loss functions to assess forecasting utility. This research will investigate the SPEC algorithm's effectiveness in predicting volatility for assets on Sui. Utilizing freely available high-frequency price data, the study will focus primarily on SUI, with validation across various blockchain assets.

Low-memory post-quantum transparent zkSNARKs

Brett Falk and Pratyush Mishra (University of Pennsylvania)

The research aims to develop scalable zkSNARKs by addressing three main barriers: prover time complexity, prover space complexity, and prover SRS size. The goal is to construct zkSNARKs that overcome these barriers simultaneously, leading to deployment-ready, scalable cryptographic proofs for various applications in blockchain technology.

We would like to thank all those who submitted proposals for the Sui Academic Research Awards program. 

For those who are interested in the program, please submit your proposals for the next round by April 4, 2024.

Brothers Brian and Ben Li share a passion for the arts. With Studio Mirai, the research and development studio they co-founded, they’re exploring the intersections between Web3 technology and creative industries.

Tamachi, Studio Mirai’s first profile picture (PFP) project, exists within Nozomi World, a rich, fictional world created to give a captivating backstory to all three PFP collections the company has in the works. In addition to providing the team with a fun and interesting way to conduct research and development for its products, these PFP collections also helped Studio Mirai create a highly engaged community in the NFT space and build a foundation for pushing out future projects.

Tamachi, Studio Mirai's first NFT project, let the team explore the possibilities of blockchain technology.

Its flagship product, Coda, is currently in development and aims to shake up the music industry with a platform that brings artists and fans closer with blockchain-powered tools.

Coda is an ambitious vision. And when the brothers launched Studio Mirai about eight years ago, predominant blockchain technology wasn’t up to the task of bringing it to life.

“My experience building on other chains was not great, because you have to conform to the standards on those chains,” said Brian Li, Studio Mirai’s Chief Technology Officer. “So when we were building out the music platform, as well as certain features for our collections, it turned out to be very difficult–if not impossible–to do on existing chains.”

After initially launching on one chain and experimenting with another, Li decided to move the entire operation over to Sui. 

“On Sui, we’re able to imagine something and then just capture that in code,” he said.

Using Sui, Studio Mirai found many tools to make its NFT projects more engaging.

The biggest game changer for Studio Mirai has been Sui’s object-based data model. While most blockchains use an account-based model, a legacy of their focus on cryptocurrency, Sui is fundamentally different. With a computing environment where everything is expressed as an object and one object can own another, Sui gives developers much more freedom.

“On other chains, there was no way to build an object,” said Li. “There was a standard, which could make it seem like you’re building an object, but at the core, you’re not. And it was just very difficult to get around that.”

But the object-based model isn’t the only Sui technology benefiting Studio Mirai. Fast path transactions, shared objects for account abstraction, transfer to object, onchain hashing, dynamic NFTs, and zkLogin all contribute to Studio Mirai’s projects. 

“We’re pretty much using every feature available to us,” said Li.

PFPs in a world of hope

When Studio Mirai decided to launch their PFP collections, they wanted to have more than just the usual set of complementary pictures. So one team member wrote a story, based in the fictional city of Nozomi (meaning “hope” in Japanese), to give depth and meaning to the characters they illustrated.

Leveraging Sui's dynamic NFT technology, Studio Mirai developed NFTs that can be upgraded from black and white to color.

Studio Mirai offers three PFP collections, all linked to the world of Nozomi. Tamashi, the original collection, consists of 100 one-of-one PFPs, which was released on another chain and will be migrating to Sui this year. Prime Machin, the team’s first dynamic collection to be launched on Sui, will be minting early this year. The manga-inspired Prime Machin collection leverages several Sui technologies in innovative ways, such as fast path transactions, transfer to object, and storage rebates for storing 4K full-resolution images onchain. In addition, Sui’s dynamic NFT capabilities will allow images in this collection to transform from black and white to color. Enforcer Machin, the next dynamic collection on Sui, will leverage object composability to allow swappable traits and real-time 3D rendering.

Bringing musicians and fans into harmony

An even more ambitious project is Coda, a music platform Studio Mirai hopes will bring some of the power back to artists and deepen connections between musicians and their fans.

“We feel like blockchain has a lot of potential to solve many things,” said Li. “I think blockchain is most useful in situations where there’s an imbalance of power. And the music world is perhaps the best example of this.”

“I think blockchain is most useful in situations where there’s an imbalance of power. And the music world is perhaps the best example of this.”

Li cites the expense of making music in the last century as the source of many problems that still persist in the industry today. Because studio time and equipment, record pressings, promotion, and touring were so expensive, musicians had little control. They had to work with a large company to get their music made and sold.

“In that kind of environment, it’s very easy for these large companies to abuse their power,” said Li. “So people get bad deals, payments are slow, concert tickets are very expensive. And the power lies with the entities between the artists and the fans." 

“Blockchain is a technology that could potentially change that,” he added. “Now we have a permissionless system that can act as that thing in between them. That was really the inspiration for this platform.”

And while the team conceived of the Coda platform years prior, they were forced to shelve development on it when existing blockchains couldn’t support their model. It wasn’t until they stumbled upon Sui in 2022 that they realized what was finally possible.

“I dug into the docs and saw the ability to create custom types that actually live in a wallet instead of just in a contract, the ability to customize the permissions aspect of the object itself,” said Li. “I told my brother ‘This is exactly what we need to build what we want.’”

The team envisions Coda as a platform that can connect musicians and fans in three ways: publishing and selling albums, selling concert tickets, and giving artists more direct insight into their fans.

Coda will allow artists to persist their records and accept payments through Sui.

Coda will allow artists to persist their records and accept payments through Sui. This design lets artists set their own album prices and helps avoid the often inscrutable, slow payment process associated with modern streaming platforms. 

An NFT-based ticketing platform would allow artists to sell tickets to their live shows. Artists could specify how much their tickets are sold for both on the primary market and the secondary market, a move designed to address the scalping problem. Sui's Kiosk primitive lets Studio Mirai build in the logic where artists can set both the primary and secondary prices. In addition, dynamic NFTs as tickets can change their visual aspect once they've been redeemed for entry to a show.

“Now, once a new show goes up, bots will buy up tickets and scalpers will then try to sell them for two or three times the original price,” said Li. “That’s not good for the fans. It’s only good for the scalpers and the marketplace, which answers to their shareholders.”

Finally, the team is working to give artists insight into their fans. Li cites the frustrations of artists who have no way to know who is attending their live shows, streaming their songs, or buying their merch. They want the platform to give artists a way to find engaged fans and send them a discount on an upcoming show or album, for example, while not disclosing any specific information about those fans. Using Sui, Studio Mirai can send any number of digital promotional items to accounts that redeemed NFT-based concert tickets.

The move to Sui

Although moving their Nozomi PFPs and Coda over to Sui took effort, the team was pleasantly surprised at how quickly they were able to get up and running. Li anticipated a six- to eight-week ramp-up time. Instead, once he got to work, he was able to begin deploying on Sui within 12 hours. And the move has enabled them to actually start building a platform that meets their grand vision.

“Sui is probably the only chain that’s suitable to build a consumer app,” said Li. “And that’s almost exclusively due to the fact that Sui has programmable transaction blocks, where you’re able to bundle a bunch of different actions into one package that can be submitted at once and then that’s processed as one thing.”

He gives an example of breaking a music recording down into six tiers, where each tier is an object that owns the previous tier. Sui allows them to create the complete tokenized record in a single programmable transaction, whereas other chains that don’t support this feature would require time to wait for each subsequent block. 

“So an interaction that might take half a second on Sui might end up taking 10 seconds on a different chain, even if there’s a fast block time,” said Li. “These programmable transaction blocks abstract away transaction speed as something that devs need to think about.”

With Sui as its foundation, Studio Mirai will continue to push the boundaries of where the creative arts can go.