The Sui Foundation is thrilled to announce the awardees of the fourth cohort of the Sui Academic Research Awards. This program funds groundbreaking research that advances Web3, particularly focusing on blockchain technology, smart contract programming, and products built on Sui.

In this cohort, we accepted 20 exceptional proposals from prestigious universities such as UC Berkeley, Yale, NYU, EPFL, and the National University of Singapore. These leading researchers will drive innovation in the Sui ecosystem. Due to the outstanding quality of proposals, the Sui Foundation committed an additional $1 million in funding for 2024 to support further research that accelerates blockchain innovation and adoption. The next call for proposals closes on July 5, 2024.

Accelerating ZKP with Caching  

Fan Zhang (Yale University)

Zero-knowledge proofs (zk-proofs) are crucial for blockchain scalability, privacy, and identity, such as Sui’s zkLogin primitive. However, generating zk-proofs is slow due to resource-intensive computations. This research enhances zk-proof generation with caching to store intermediate results of repetitive calculations, like multi-scalar multiplications and fast fourier transforms. This approach leverages patterns in user inputs to significantly speed up zk-proof generation, improving efficiency in real-world applications.

AIChain: An LLM to Connect Static Analysis and Fuzzing for More Secure Smart Contracts 

Vijay Ganesh (Georgia Institute of Technology)

AIChain addresses the challenge of smart contract security by employing AI for static analysis and fuzzing to eliminate manual work. AIChain is a Large Language Model (LLM) used to process smart contracts and a static analysis report to generate code for fuzzing to verify potential vulnerabilities. Initial tests with OpenAI’s GPT-3.5-Turbo have shown effective results, and the tool is being expanded to detect more vulnerabilities.

At-home Key Custody for Web3 Platforms

Tushar Jois (The Research Foundation of CUNY)

Web3 platforms offer unprecedented control over digital assets, but key custody remains a major point of friction. Traditional solutions like hardware wallets and third-party escrow are costly, deterring potential users. This research explores using existing internet of things devices in smart homes for key custody, leveraging the collective security of multiple fixed-in-place devices. The system, SocIoTy, will use smart home devices to perform cryptographic operations and two-factor authentication, ensuring key material remains secure within the home. This approach provides a cost-effective, secure method for Web3 key custody, enhancing user confidence and accessibility.

Autobahn: How to Make Partially Synchronous BFT Protocols Robust to Partial Synchrony

Natacha Crooks (University of California, Berkeley)

Traditional Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) protocols must balance low latency and network robustness but on occasion falter during network blips, leading to “asynchrony hangovers.” DAG-based BFT protocols, while robust, often experience higher latency. This research will develop Autobahn, a new consensus protocol combining DAG-based data dissemination with a traditional partially synchronous consensus mechanism. Autobahn maintains low latency during normal operation and robustness during network blips by decoupling consensus from data dissemination, ensuring efficient recovery and high performance.

Automated Risk Management for the Sui DeFi Ecosystem

Lukasz Szpruch and David Siska (University of Edinburgh)

This project aims to develop automated risk management systems to enhance economic security in Sui’s DeFi ecosystem using quantitative finance and agent-based simulations. Current DAO governance struggles with real-time risk management, often relying on offchain, centralized third-party recommendations. This research will create a verifiable, real-time data-driven risk management framework, automating protocol parameter settings and stress testing with agent-based simulations. The initial focus will be on decentralized lending protocols providing open-source tools to enable transparent, scalable, and accountable risk assessments.

Behavioral Abstractions to Support Smart Contract Auditors

Diego Garbervetsky (Universidad de Buenos Aires)

Auditing is a human-intensive task that often relies on tools like linters and fuzzers, which lack domain-specific insights. This research will build tools using predicate abstraction to construct models (automata) that help auditors explore and validate smart contract behavior. By gradually understanding contract behavior through proposed predicates, auditors can use these models to identify functional and implementation bugs more effectively. The goal is to automate the generation of these models, improving audit efficiency and the overall security of smart contracts.

Benchmarking Sui Through Parallel Execution Perspective

Ooi Beng Chin (National University of Singapore)

This project addresses the execution engine bottleneck in modern blockchains, moving beyond the limitations of consensus algorithms. By designing Web3-native workloads for parallel execution, the team aims to benchmark popular apps like DEXes, NFT marketplaces, and games. This research will provide valuable insights into the scalability and performance of modern blockchains, enhancing the efficiency of parallel execution strategies.

Beyond Space and Time: Experimental Economics via Smart Contracts

Yang You (The University of Hong Kong), Lin William Cong (Cornell University)

Traditional social science experiments face limitations due to artificial treatments and short durations in lab settings. This research introduces a decentralized event contract trading platform powered by automated market-making, where participants trade based on real-world events, providing more reliable data. By continuously engaging participants with platform tokens convertible to USDC for correct predictions, this approach allows for long-term studies of expectations, demonstrated through an experiment on interest rate expectations influenced by US Federal Reserve announcements.

Blockchain Address Poisoning  

Nicolas Christin (Carnegie Mellon University)

This research tackles the issue of blockchain address poisoning, where attackers create “look-alike” addresses to trick users into sending funds to the wrong recipient, commonly referred to as address poisoning. Blockchain transactions are irreversible, making such attacks particularly harmful. This project will formalize the threat model, measure the prevalence across multiple blockchains, characterize attacker behavior, and develop mitigations. The goal is to create a rigorous framework for Web3 UI design that enhances user safety and confidence on Sui and other platforms.

Catching the Risk-free Yield on Sui: A Deep Hedging Approach Using Options and Futures

Dimitrios Karyampas and Walid Sofiane (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne), Adam Bouabda (ETH Zurich)

Stable, near risk-free yields are crucial for investor confidence in the highly volatile cryptocurrency market. This project employs innovative hedging strategies inspired by synthetic stablecoins to enhance current methods. By integrating perpetual contracts with advanced options strategies, particularly box spreads, and utilizing reinforcement learning, the project aims to develop a dynamic trading strategy that adapts to market conditions, maximizing yields while minimizing risks.

Compositional Specification and Verification of Blockchain Consensus Protocols

Zhong Shao (Yale University)

Byzantine State Machine Replication (SMR) protocols ensure a linear, tamper-proof history by making participating nodes agree on a single consensus. However, implementing these protocols correctly to maintain both safety and liveness remains a complex challenge. By introducing an intermediate model of consensus protocols that includes the pacemaker component, this work supports proving both safety and liveness through refinement. The goal is to develop a Linearizable Byzantine Distributed Objects (LiDO) model to simplify and improve the verification of consensus protocols, ensuring robust and reliable blockchain implementations.

Concurrent Smart Contract Execution Paradigm

Mohammad Sadoghi (University of California, Davis)

Over the past decade, ResilientDB has pioneered a resilient and sustainable data platform that unifies secure transactional and real-time analytical processing. As an Apache Incubator project, ResilientDB has made significant contributions, including developing a geo-scale consensus protocol (GeoBFT) and hybrid sharding protocols (Cerberus, RingBFT). Building on this foundation, the team now aims to develop high-throughput, low-latency concurrency control protocols optimized for concurrent smart contract execution.

Efficient Post-Quantum Multi-Party Computation using Lightweight Cryptography

Aniket Kate (Purdue University)

Multi-Party Computation (MPC) allows multiple parties to compute functions on private inputs while maintaining privacy, essential for Web3 applications like privacy-preserving AI and healthcare analytics. This research aims to develop hash-based MPC protocols that are scalable and post-quantum secure, overcoming the limitations of current protocols that rely on computationally expensive cryptographic operations. Preliminary results with the HashRand protocol show significant performance improvements, achieving 11,000 beacons per minute with 16 participants, vastly outperforming existing solutions.

Encryption on Chain

Yevgeniy Dodis (New York University)

Blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum offer pseudonymity but lack strong privacy guarantees natively, allowing user transactions to be traceable. This research aims to address this by exploring “encryption on chain” for private storage, as opposed to zk-proofs, to ensure data privacy and availability on blockchains. Drawing on expertise from developing secure messaging protocols like Signal and Zoom, this project seeks to develop robust privacy solutions for blockchain transactions.

Evaluating Sui’s Resilience to Network Attacks

Prateek Mittal (Princeton University)

This research investigates the resilience of the Sui validator network to network-level routing attacks, particularly Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) hijacks and DDoS attacks. The study will assess validator nodes’ resilience to these threats, with the ultimate goal of developing a resilience “score” function to adjust validation payouts accordingly and incentivize secure connectivity via the next-generation network architecture SCION. This research will be the most detailed simulation of BGP hijack resilience to date, incorporating real-world routing aspects to ensure the robustness and reliability of Sui.

Faster zk-SNARKs from Accumulation

Benedikt Bünz (New York University)

This research aims to improve Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Arguments of Knowledge (zk-SNARKs), enhancing blockchain privacy and efficiency. By using “accumulation” techniques, computations are broken into small steps and combined, simplifying verification. This method can improve signature aggregation in systems like Bullshark and Narwhal, offering more efficient verification. The project seeks to make zk-SNARKs faster and easier to generate for practical applications.

Fully Decentralized zkLogin with Biometric Login Methods and Switchable Login Providers

Jieliang Yin (The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology)

Current blockchain systems face challenges in user identity authentication, relying heavily on users to manage passwords or specific devices, which can be inconvenient and insecure. This proposed research addresses this issue by introducing a decentralized zkLogin solution that utilizes biometric identification methods such as voiceprint, fingerprint, face, and iris recognition. This approach eliminates the need for users to remember or carry anything and allows them to switch between different service providers, enhancing both convenience and security while ensuring continuous access to their blockchain accounts.

MoveGen: Generating Secure Smart Contracts Based on Natural Language and Security Specifications

Weidong Shi and Rabimba Karanjai (University Of Houston)

This project aims to enhance SolMover, a tool for generating Move code, by improving its task generator LLM, expanding the Move code dataset, and integrating error correction mechanisms. The research will explore the direct generation of Move code from natural language specifications, using compiler feedback to iteratively improve code accuracy and quality. Additionally, advanced safety alignment techniques, linter-based patching, and automatic unit test generation will be employed to ensure the correctness and reliability of the generated Move contracts. 

Scalability from Zero-Knowledge Virtual Machines

Sanjam Garg (University of California, Berkeley)

zk-proofs are a powerful cryptographic tool that ensures security and privacy in blockchain applications. zk-proofs certify the correct execution of computations without revealing any input data, making them crucial for applications like verifiable databases, private voting, and anonymous credentials. Implementing zk-proofs for the Move virtual machine would allow clients to execute smart contracts locally and submit proof, reducing miners’ workloads and supporting computationally-intensive contracts. This would also help enable privacy-preserving applications on Sui.

SuiGPT AutoTest: Generate Comprehensive Move Unit Tests with Large Language Models

Ken Koedinger and Eason Chen (Carnegie Mellon University)

While testing is crucial for maintaining smart contract integrity, crafting unit tests is very time-consuming. This research explores using LLMs to assist in writing these tests. Initial successes with prompt engineering show LLMs can generate effective, compilable test code. This research will develop an SDK and a Visual Studio Code extension to help Move developers easily create comprehensive unit tests, enhancing efficiency and reliability.

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 July 5, 2024.

Every transaction and piece of stored data incurs a cost on a blockchain. Whether it's the fees to make payments, gas costs to execute smart contract operations, or the resources required to store data, the size of the variables involved plays a crucial role in determining these costs. Reducing the size of these variables without compromising their functionality or security can lead to significant savings in communication, storage, and transaction fees.

Introducing Truncator

Truncator is a mining-based technique designed to reduce the size of various cryptographic outputs frequently encountered in blockchain systems. Truncator's key innovation involves achieving this reduction without sacrificing security.

How Truncator works

Truncator adds a few extra steps during transaction composition in return for significant benefits in reducing transaction size and associated gas costs. While this addition time is typically on the order of seconds rather than milliseconds, it is particularly beneficial for transactions where reduced variable size outweighs the need for speed. By adopting this approach, the transaction sender realizes advantages, such as reduced transaction fees, and the entire ecosystem benefits through reduced storage and communication costs.

The technique behind Truncator

This approach involves an iterative search (or mining) in the cryptographic primitives inputs or randomness to find a more efficient encrypted output. This method crafts each primitive’s output in a specific way that satisfies the modified system’s public parameters, such as requiring some specific bits of the output to be constant. This is similar to how proof-of-work mechanisms require miners to continually digest the same data with different random values until meeting a specific system need. In the case of Truncator, the system goal is to simplify the output to a certain degree.

For example, consider applying Truncator in the key generation algorithm for discrete logarithm (dlog)-based keys. Assuming all acceptable public keys have a pre-determined ℓ-bit prefix, we can perform an iterative search for a secret key \( sk \) such that the format of its derived public key \( pk = g^{sk} \) satisfies the predetermined ℓ-bit prefix. The resulting public keys would be ℓ bits smaller, thus offering reduced communication and storage costs.

Ensuring security

Security is paramount, of course, and the bit-security framework shows that Truncator does not reduce the security of the keys. The bit-security framework states that a primitive \( P \) has κ-bit security if it takes an adversary \( 2^{κ} \) operations to break it. This implies that for any attack with computational cost \( T \) and success probability \( ϵ \), it must hold that \( T /ϵ > 2^{κ} \). The intuition here is that the mining approach for truncation incurs higher attack costs, which overall offsets the reduced key space, maintaining the same level of security.

Real-world applications

The idea of an iterative search to reduce the size of keys and addresses has appeared before in the blockchain space, most notably in Ethereum proposals for addresses with a prefix of many zeroes to reduce gas fees (known as “gas golfing”). In this Truncator work, we formalize and expand this idea to multiple cryptographic primitives such as hash digests, elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) public keys, and signature outputs. For example, about 7 percent compression (2 bytes less) has been achieved in less than a second for ed25519 signatures and less than 10 milliseconds for compressed Blake3 digests. We have also explored truncation in ElGamal encryption and Diffie-Hellman-based encryption, commonly used for blockchain stealth addresses.

A new approach for hash-based post-quantum signatures

There is an exciting opportunity to construct new cryptographic schemes that leverage Truncator’s techniques during the protocol design phase, particularly in the context of post-quantum security. Hash-based signature schemes, such as Lamport signatures and their variants, are inherently quantum-resistant because their security relies on the properties of hash functions rather than on the hardness of problems like factoring large integers or computing discrete logarithms, which quantum computers can efficiently solve.

Future schemes could consider mining feasibility and securely adjust key generation or other cryptographic operations to accommodate it, thus enhancing resistance to quantum computing attacks. By optimizing the key derivation process in hash-based signature schemes, it is possible to achieve better performance and efficiency. This involves reducing the computational load and storage requirements, which is crucial for maintaining the security and usability of cryptographic systems in a post-quantum world. High-performance mining techniques can lead to more efficient generation and verification of signatures, ensuring that cryptographic systems remain robust and scalable in the face of emerging quantum threats.

Optimizing Lamport signatures

One intriguing direction involves optimizing hash-based signatures at the key derivation level, aiming for high-performance mining with significantly better results than brute forcing. For example, in traditional Lamport signatures, the private key comprises 256 independent pairs of 256-bit random values (seeds), totaling 512 elements and 16 KiB. Each sub-private key corresponds to a public key, its hash, resulting in a total of 512 elements. Typically, we sign hashed messages, where each bit in the hash corresponds to a sub-private value.

While compressing Lamport signatures typically requires techniques such as the Winternitz hash-chain variant, it can also be achieved by deriving private parts in a tree fashion structure rather than selecting them independently.

Consider signing a message consisting of all zeros. Using the top key, verifiers can derive all sub-keys via Merkle tree operations. For adjacent similar bits, we can use the corresponding tree path to reduce the number of keys required for submission. This principle also applies to adjacent set bits. By maximizing the number of adjacent bits through hash retries, we can reduce the signature payload, resulting in more optimized Lamport verification and shorter proofs.

By maximizing the number of adjacent bits through hash retries, we can reduce the signature payload, resulting in more optimized Lamport verification and shorter proofs. Conclusion

Truncator presents an innovative approach to truncating the output size of cryptographic primitives, offering a computational trade-off that opens new avenues for exploration. We've highlighted its application to basic cryptographic primitives and introduced an exciting direction for optimizing hash-based signatures at the key derivation level.

Looking ahead, we see potential in extending Truncator to more advanced cryptographic primitives and crafting novel protocols that leverage mining techniques across various cryptographic protocols. These efforts hold the promise of enhancing efficiency and reducing storage costs in the blockchain ecosystem and beyond.

At Sui, we’re particularly excited about incorporating such optimizations into our roadmap for post-quantum security, ensuring that our platform remains at the forefront of innovation while maintaining robust security standards. Truncator can potentially help in more gas-friendly post-quantum signatures, contributing to a more efficient and secure blockchain environment.

To explore Truncator more deeply, check out our GitHub.

“Better, bigger, stronger!”

That’s the vision for Sui Generis, an NFT auction house that launched in March, according to co-founder and CEO Gab9.

On the surface, Sui Generis is a rebranded incarnation of the wildly popular Tombheads NFT auction house, which migrated off the Fantom blockchain earlier this year. But Sui Generis, which launched March 31 on Sui with its own tokens and its first auction, is looking to do much more than simply emulate its earlier presence on a new blockchain. It’s leveraging Sui technology to catapult itself far beyond what it has done in the past, bringing its stable of bluechip artists and a passionate community of art lovers along with it.

“Back in 2021 to 2022, we completely shaped the one-to-one NFT trend on the Fantom blockchain,” said Gab9. “We built a phenomenon never seen before on any blockchain. We created a cult.”

Now the team is using all of the expertise and wisdom they gained from that project — while taking advantage of Sui, Sui Kiosk, and the Move programming language — to build a thriving art ecosystem that gives back to the community. The effort paid off earlier this year when Sui Generis scored first place, a gold medal, in the ThinkSui contest. 

Sui Generis published cards for its artists, highlighting their skills. Finnish artist Sellek previously created the SELLEK Originals and Fantom Wheelz collections on Fantom. Building on a strong foundation

In its first iteration, the group faced many challenges. They didn't have a dedicated developer, extensive stats on the marketplace, or even a website. They didn’t have a token, and all sales took place manually and offchain. There was also no user activity during the week when auctions weren’t taking place. “We couldn’t build the vision we wanted,” said Gab9. “But even with those flaws, our artists generated over $10 million in revenue onchain.”

Just a few short months after moving operations to Sui, things look very different.

Today, the team includes a talented Move developer and a dynamic website that showcases its artists and short documentary filmwork. It has a governance token for its decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), allowing the community to vote on the trends they want to see on auction and how they want to utilize auction house funds. And all art pieces that sell are listed on Tradeport, a popular multichain NFT trading platform.

Vietnam-based artist Heyun Le previously created the Cyber Neko, Phantasm Box, and PhantasMeow collections on Fantom.

At the moment, the auction house is working with 30 artists, all of whom worked with the team in the past. Auctions take place in Discord and are held bi-weekly on Sundays. For about 30 minutes before an auction, people gather to chat, catch up, and listen to music together. Then the auction kicks off and the real fun begins. 

Each artist introduces the piece they’re offering, and a co-host reads the lore associated with the art. Once a lively bidding war concludes, the winner is directed to Tradeport to make the NFT purchase.

In between auctions, the community connects via midweek live streams, where people can chat with their favorite artists, discover a new one, and watch the creation process of a piece that will be auctioned the following weekend.

On June 23, 2024, Heyun Le releases a new one-to-one inscription collection of 100 NFTs called Neon Nibblers Nexus. Powering modern art with Sui

Sui Generis takes advantage of several unique Sui technologies. Sui Generis is working to create all of its NFT collections directly onchain, taking advantage of Sui’s unique storage paradigm that means users won’t lose NFT images if a server goes offline.

Sui Kiosk allows the company and its artists to enforce royalties on any NFTs that are resold in the future, limit trades with certain addresses, or even lock them and make them soulbound.

The team is also partnering with Aftermath Finance to develop fractionalized NFTs for its primary collection, consisting of eight characters with eight phases of evolution each. Twenty-four special perks will become available throughout those 64 phases. Using this fractionalized NFT technology, a user will have to verify their holding with a $GENERIS token as proof of being a supporter of the auction house, mint for some SUI, then burn their NFT to mint a new one. “When we offer an NFT, we want them to have utility,” said Gab9. “It’s important for us to not simply bring a PFP.”

Peruvian artist Sick Individual previously created the SICKINDIVIDUAL, SICK MINDS, and Sick Faces collections on Fantom.

The team is also considering offering a generative collection using 404 (or hybrid) tech on Sui where different traits could be reachable by burning the token, allowing for the creation of tradeable, fractionalized ownership of digital assets. The mint-and-burn mechanism and fractional ownership features of hybrids enhance the liquidity of NFTs, making it easier for buyers and sellers to trade the NFTs, according to the team.

And on June 16, 2024, Sui Generis releases its Official House collection of utility NFTs.

Growing community

Sui Generis fosters a sense of community among its artists and users both through art and action.

“There is speculation on fine arts, and some people are in crypto to not only enjoy PFPs but to make money,” said Gab9. Although he notes that many works created by Sui Generis artists are selling at four or five times their original price, “We build more than that.” 

Sui Generis specifically works with artists who nurture relationships with their holders, creating incredible lore, the sentiment of being part of a group, and even physical merch. They plan to open the door to new artist applications in early June with governance votes.

“We incentivize buying NFTs as well,” he said. “We give $GENERIS token airdrops, which means users can participate in governance and decision making. We distribute all our auction fees and GameFi fees back to our holders.”

Los Angeles-based artist Aspenth previously created the Disturbia collection on Fantom.

All the while, it’s been giving back to the community as it grows. After a massive exploit hit a project Gab9 had previously been involved in, he worked with one popular artist to organize a fundraiser to benefit the people who had suffered the most from financial losses. “We held a six-hour auction where we sold 65 pieces and raised about $148,000.”

As the auction house made money, they collectively realized they could use some of those funds for the greater good. The group donated to a dog shelter in Australia, and helped one person from the community pay hospital bills after an accident.

Bridging the gap to Web3

At its core, Sui Generis is all about the art and artists it works with.

“Modern art is a different kind of animal on the blockchain compared with traditional art and in real life,” said Gab9. “The bridge for artists off chain to join the ecosystem can be difficult.” 

To help make that transition easier, the group is planning to host live, in-person auctions where they expose NFTs on screen and help onboard new users — even those with no crypto familiarity at all — guiding them through the process of creating a Sui wallet and making transactions. 

“Crypto might not be for everyone, but everyone loves art,” said Gab9. “Our goal is to onboard non-crypto people who love art, and change the view that people have from physical to digital arts.”

The Sui Foundation is pleased to unveil its March and April grant recipients. Over these two months, 10 projects have been awarded grants for initiatives that accelerate Sui's integration and progression.

Out of the 10 projects awarded grants in this round, eight focus on creating better developer experiences, from developing a powerful integrated development environment (IDE) to using zero-knowledge proofs to safeguard user information.

Alphaday

Alphaday offers blockchain experience dashboards for enthusiasts, developers, and builders. Users can create their own customized dashboards simply utilizing information and data from various services including news and social feeds, price charts, and other apps to create daily workflows in an easy to use way.

Birdeye

Birdeye is a blockchain data aggregator tailored for traders, providing comprehensive insights and data analysis to enhance trading strategies. By offering a range of functionalities, such as transaction tracking, various bots, and APIs, Birdeye empowers traders with insights for making well-informed decisions.

Hydro 

Hydro is a Web3 content monetization tool for websites and apps, promoting an ad-free internet. Hydro allows content publishers to fully monetise time spent on their content, reducing reliance on ads, while offering their audience a richer online experience enhancing both user retention and publisher revenue.

JumboShrimps 

JumboShrimps offers a no-loss prize pool staking platform, providing users with a unique way to stake and win without risking their principal investment. Leveraging the power of liquid staking on Sui, JumboShrimps allows users to put their staked SUI to work. 

Jump Trade

Jump Trade is building an opinion-based trading platform that operates as a centralized custodian prediction market, allowing users to speculate on the outcomes of real-world events. Leveraging unique characteristics of dynamic NFTs on Sui, Jump Trade is building functionality unique to prediction markets.

Pugs That Fud by Studio Mirai

Pugs That Fud is an upcoming learn-to-earn platform leveraging unique features of dynamic NFTs on Sui. Pugs That Fud will be a dynamic profile picture NFT project that features 3D Pug NFTs (also called “pugshots”) with traits inspired by the Sui community. Pug owners will be able to participate in engaging onchain exams designed to further their knowledge about Sui-related topics and earn prizes.

S3.Money by Pravica 

Stablecoin Studio on Sui, otherwise known as S3.Money, is an open-source SDK designed to simplify the process of issuing stablecoins on Sui. S3.Money provides a comprehensive toolkit for stablecoin issuers to deploy apps, oversee operations, and manage stablecoins using a GUI web application and/or SDK, eliminating the need of building smart contracts.

Spark Payments

Spark Payments is building a payments orchestration platform that lets teams build their ideal payments flow, facilitating seamless and secure transactions for businesses. With Spark Payments, apps on any blockchain will be able to accept SUI as payment, while apps on Sui will be able to offer additional payment options including fiat and other popular cryptocurrencies.

SWAYE

SWAYE is building a suite of tools to help onboard users to Web3, particularly within the gaming industry. With onboarding automation technology combining account abstraction, Telegram's API, AI for natural language processing, machine learning, and Sui technology SWAYE serves as a helper and automates onboarding users to Sui games.

Apply for a Sui grant

We welcome all projects that provide long-term utility and contribute to the growth of the Sui ecosystem to apply for grants. To qualify for funding, project applicants are required to submit comprehensive proposals outlining their plans, a detailed budget breakdown, crucial milestones, team expertise, and anticipated impact on the Sui community.

Interested in Sui grants? Apply today!

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 game platform SWAYE demonstrated a unique proposition for Web3 games on Sui with its OG Battlefront title, launched on Telegram. Rather than a traditional app or Web-based approach, players access the game through the SWAYE AI bot channel on Telegram. Highlighting this unique platform, SWAYE calls it "Web3's most accessible game."

With onboarding automation technology combining account abstraction, Sui, Telegram's API, and AI for natural language processing and machine learning, SWAYE serves as a helper and automates onboarding users to the OG Battlefront game. It automates wallet creation and NFT minting, abstracting away all the friction from accessing Web3.

In this arcade-style game, players can:

• Power-up with Traits: Boost their dynamic NFTs with experience points and level up faster. More traits increase power and $WAYE token earning potential.

• In-game referrals: Use referral links to earn more $WAYE tokens. 

• Enable auto-fire: Continuously shoot and keep enemies at bay.

• Rhythm control: Master the game's rhythm to control the descent speed of enemies. 

• Shooting strategy and fire discipline: This tactic maximizes ammunition impact and avoids wild firing.

More than just an arcade game, however, SWAYE is a middleware platform giving builders a very unique means of onboarding users. SWAYE leverages Telegram's popularity among Web3 users to provide a pathway to register for and launch apps. Behind the scenes, SWAYE uses an infrastructure-based wallet and sponsored transactions to eliminate friction.

This onboarding pathway shows itself in OG Battlefront, where in just a few clicks, players register and launch the game, with no need to create a username and password or connect a wallet. 

Further demonstrating its Web3 integration, the company created the $WAYE token as a means of implementing an economy in OG Battlefront. Players earn what the documentation refers to as $WAYE points through various activities, both in-game and outside of it. 

Normies, dynamic NFTs in OG Battlefront, can be upgraded through a large collection of purchasable traits.

Similarly, SWAYE offers NFT collectibles called Normies. Leveraging Sui's dynamic NFTs, players can upgrade their Normies from a collection of 450 traits, making them more rare and giving them unique elements. Players spend $WAYE to purchase traits.

As a platform, SWAYE offers builders unique near-frictionless user onboarding and expertise in Sui. The latter includes dynamic NFTs, sponsored transactions, and infrastructure-based wallets. These attributes make it a compelling choice for builders.

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.

AI startup Atoma announced its upcoming inference network will integrate with Sui. The network will empower builders to leverage AI in their apps. Atoma chose Sui as its first blockchain integration due to its scalability and performance.

Although generative AI made waves in the past few years, it has yet to find its way into many consumer apps. Atoma's AI inference network takes a broad-based and decentralized approach to enabling builders. Deploying AI as a layer, builders can integrate intelligent decision-making into their Sui apps.

Jorge Antonio, Co-founder and CTO of Atoma, participates in a panel during Sui Basecamp.

Using Atoma, builders will be able to automatically generate and audit code, and automate workflows. DeFi protocols can leverage the service for risk analysis and prediction tools, while gaming companies and artists can generate assets and create genetic NFTs. Atoma's AI can also classify and fact check social media content, and help manage decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).  

As most independent developers and even large companies don't have the resources to hire an AI team, Atoma's inference network provides a future-forward capability that may become a critical necessity for apps.

Builders interested in exploring Atoma's capabilities can contact the company through its partnership form.

Financial startup Agora said it would make its upcoming AUSD stablecoin available on Sui. AUSD becomes the second stablecoin, after FDUSD, set to launch on Sui. AUSD is Agora's first product, and leads its effort to build global financial infrastructure. 

The stablecoin, expected to release in June of this year, will maintain a value equivalent to the US dollar. Agora previously announced it would make AUSD available on Ethereum, Arbitrum, and Optimism. Sui is the first non-Ethereum virtual machine blockchain for AUSD. 

Agora's stated goal, of building "a more secure, inclusive financial system" giving people around the world access to the US dollar, complements Sui's globally accessible blockchain infrastructure, which works as a secure medium of exchange for cryptocurrencies. With backing from investment management companies including Dragonfly and General Catalyst, Agora looks to have substantial backing for its stablecoin.

Sui offers Agora a conducive environment to launch a stablecoin, with highly scalable infrastructure leading the industry in throughput. Native technologies, such as zkLogin, align with Agora's long-term goal of creating an accessible and inclusive financial platform. The success of DeFi protocols on Sui also shows its conducive environment as a cryptocurrency exchange platform.

As a value storage mechanism tied to the US dollar, AUSD will offer people in underserved communities around the world access to financial stability, with Sui serving as its coordination layer.

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.

At Sui Basecamp in April, attendees got to experience a collection of Sui technologies in the form of Nami Bags, digital gift bags full of NFTs and coupons from the Sui ecosystem. Powered by Enoki, Mysten Labs' new customer engagement platform, even attendees without crypto wallets could easily claim their Nami Bag. The contents demonstrated the flexibility and portability of digital assets on Sui, and served as a compelling use case for promotions and audience engagement built on the Sui network.

Each conference attendee was able to claim a Nami Bag by activating the QR code on their badge and using either zkLogin to create a new wallet or connect with an existing wallet. The bags, each tied to a unique code, contained a randomly distributed set of gifts, including a SuiFren and five Basecamp-only digital accessories, commemorative NFTs, and vouchers claimable on different project apps. Some digital gifts could also be used to redeem swag at the event itself.

The Nami Bags proved a big hit among attendees and demonstrated how apps powered by Enoki can enhance brand engagement at live events.

0:00 / 1:29 1× The user journey

As with most conferences, Sui Basecamp attendees were all issued a badge. However, each badge included a QR code. When an attendee scanned their code, their browser opened a website inviting them to either use their existing login credentials from Google, or connect their existing Sui wallet. zkLogin, which powered the former path, would create a Sui wallet in the background for the user.

After this step, the attendee entered a unique claim code, which gifted them a digital Nami Bag. Opening that bag revealed a delightful assortment of digital assets, including an individual SuiFren unique to that Nami Bag. That NFT was complemented by four digital accessories with a Sui Basecamp theme, giving the SuiFren a unique look associated with the event. An additional phygital accessory could be redeemed for a croissant, SuiFrens travel mug, or a Dopp kit at the SuiFrens Parlor, an onsite booth at Sui Basecamp.

Among the Nami Bag contents was a SuiFren, which let the owner claim a travel mug at the SuiFrens Parlor. The combination of NFT and swag is referred to as a phygital accessory.

The Nami Bags also contained a commemorative Sui Basecamp NFT redeemable for a free year of SuiNS registration. Five to six other digital gifts included coupon codes and NFTs from projects such as Team Liquid, Quantum Temple, Suilend, KriyaDex, and NHN Pebble City. 

On top of that, each Nami Bag came with an Enoki time capsule NFT. During the Enoki launch announcement at Sui Basecamp, five lucky attendees had their NFTs reveal that they were winners of a shopping spree at Galeries Lafayette.

Key Sui technology

As a promotion aiming for maximum reach, Nami Bags relied on Enoki, which bundles services easing the journey to user onboarding. The Nami Bags leveraged one of those services, zkLogin, to let Sui Basecamp attendees use their existing Google login credentials to create an account and claim their Nami Bag. 

Through this mechanism, conference attendees new to crypto could easily participate, without needing to create a wallet. Behind the scenes, Sui verifies their credentials through a process that does not reveal either a username or password to the Sui infrastructure. With the login verified, the system creates a wallet to hold any digital assets acquired by that account. The user can use their credentials at any time to log in and access their assets, in a process that feels much more like a typical Web2 account creation process.

Of course, experienced crypto users had the option of connecting their existing wallets, storing all the Nami bag goodies along with any other digital assets they own.

Blockchain transactions also require gas fees, yet Enoki insulated conference attendees from having to acquire tokens to pay for the Nami Bags. Its sponsored transactions service let the Nami Bags developer pay the gas fees, creating a seamless experience for users.

Sui's dynamic NFTs played a big part in delighting conference attendees, turning a digital gift bag into a sublime experience. This innovative NFT technology allowed each SuiFrens to have five accessory NFTs, which could appear as shoes, clothing, or anything else. As each NFT is an object, the SuiFrens' owners can remove the accessories and trade them as individual items. Other blockchains would require that the original NFT and its accessory be burned, and two new separate NFTs be minted, an inefficient process to achieve the same result.

The Enoki time capsule NFTs in the Nami bag showed off an exciting capability which allows NFTs to be time-coded. With this programming, an NFT can transform at a specific time, making it ideal for raffle reveals as was done at Sui Basecamp. This technology opens up dramatic use cases, where thousands of people could all have NFTs expose a result at the same time, creating excitement and anticipation leading up to the reveal, with verifiable ownership and tracking afterwards. 

Scratching the surface

With only a year since Sui Mainnet launch, builders haven't yet had the chance to explore all the myriad possibilities of the technologies. The Nami bags given away during Sui Basecamp show just some of the potential. 

Enoki is quickly proving itself as a platform to easily onboard new users. Its set of SDKs and APIs lets builders incorporate its services without having to be a blockchain or Move expert, allowing anyone to access the superpowers of Web3. Dynamic and composable NFTs open up Sui's possibilities even further, with use cases as simple as a digital coupon or as far-reaching as a lottery ticket or voter ballot.

Blockchains use tokens as a fundamental means of conveying value. They can be the chain's native unit of exchange, they can be an app's unit of exchange, and they can even be used as currency in a game world. Tokens support robust DeFi activity on Sui and other blockchains as well.

Ethereum uses the ERC-20 standard for tokens. These tokens, which developers can create for a variety of purposes, are represented as smart contracts on Ethereum. On Sui, tokens use the Coin package. Like ERC-20 tokens, developers can build Coins on Sui for a wide range of uses. However, Sui's fundamentally different data model means that each coin is owned by an address on the network.

Going through the processes to create ERC-20 tokens on Ethereum and Coins on Sui shows the differences between these two standards. Ethereum developers might also be surprised by the flexibility of the Coin package on Sui.

Deploying an ERC-20 token

For this example, we will use the Remix IDE to demonstrate the steps required to create a token using the ERC-20 standard.

1. Begin by opening the online Remix IDE in your browser.

2. Select the ERC-20 project template from OpenZeppelin.

3. In File Explorer on the left pane, select Token.sol in the contracts directory to load its dependencies.

4. Add a

_mint

function to the default constructor to specify the number of tokens to create. The following code sample shows one method.

contract MyToken is ERC-20, ERC-20Permit {     constructor() ERC-20("MyToken", "MTK") ERC-20Permit("MyToken") {_mint(msg.sender, 12);} }

 5. Click the Compile icon in the quick menu.

6. Open the Deploy & Run Transactions plugin, select the Remix VM (Cancun) environment, and click the Deploy button.

Following the above steps copies the ERC-20 dependencies into your project. Your contract, along with those copied dependencies, compiles into EVM bytecode and deploys onto the virtual blockchain. Your transaction was mined, and the contract representing your ERC-20 tokens is now live in Remix’s virtual blockchain.

How ERC-20 tokens are represented

To find your tokens, go to the dependency contracts on Remix (.deps folder) and navigate to the ERC-20.sol file. The first line in that abstract contract is:

mapping(address account => uint256) private _balances;

This mapping is where all balances are stored for all users. To get a user’s balance, you can call your contract’s

balanceOf

function with the user’s address. It will query this mapping and fetch the value. When displaying your funds, your MetaMask wallet makes several balanceOf() calls to various contracts and shows the results.

In other words, all transfers, mints, burns, as well as DeFi protocols interactions, ultimately updates the values inside of this mapping.

Deploying a Coin

On Sui, deployed contracts do not represent new tokens. Rather, the Sui framework uses a  Coin package to provide this functionality. Although a simplified analogy, you can think of a single package as a contract. It exposes functions that can take objects and return other objects.

Follow the documentation on installing Sui to set up your coding environment. Alternatively, you can use the Remix IDE mentioned above to write Move code on Sui by installing the WELLDONE Code plug-in.

The following Move code example imports the Coin module, and employs its

create_currency

function to initialize the coin.

use sui::coin::{Self, TreasuryCap}; public struct MY_COIN has drop {} fun init(witness: MY_COIN, ctx: &mut TxContext) {         let (treasury, metadata) = coin::create_currency(witness, 6, b"MY_COIN", b"", b"", option::none(), ctx);         transfer::public_freeze_object(metadata);         transfer::public_transfer(treasury, ctx.sender())     }

When you call

create_currency()

, Sui returns TreasuryCap<T> and CoinMetadata<T> objects  for your currency, where T is the type for your currency ( MY_COIN in the previous example). 

Your wallet address actually holds these objects. They exist only in your wallet, and not anywhere else, as opposed to the ERC-20 method which uses mappings to track ownership.

TreasuryCap

, short for "treasury capability", is the key needed to mint new coin supply. The TreasuryCap can be transferred to a different address of a trusted third party, or it can be destroyed. Destroying a TreasuryCap is similar to renouncing ownership in an ERC-20 contract. 

How Coin objects are represented

To mint new supply, the

TreasuryCap

holder calls the Coin mint function. The function mints, or creates, a Coin<T> object that represents the amount the function mints. It sits in your wallet (assuming your address is provided as the recipient), in the literal sense. If the TreasuryCap holder calls mint() again, the process creates another Coin<T> object and transfers that coin to your wallet as well. You can have multiple Coin objects for the same currency and your total balance of that currency is the sum of these coins.

ERC-20 vs Coin features

Although Ethereum and Sui offer similar actions, such as transferring and spending, when it comes to tokens, the fundamental structures of each blockchain creates underlying differences in how these actions work.

Minting and burning

An authorized user can mint new tokens on Ethereum by calling the

mint

function in that token’s contract. This updates the _balances mapping and increases the total supply. Any user can call the burn function, but they are only allowed to burn their own balance. 

Similarly on Sui, an authorized user can call the

mint

function to mint new coins, as described above. The difference is that your balance on Sui is not represented by a mapping in a shared state, but is among the very objects in your wallet. In this sense, ERC-20 is like an ATM card letting you digitally manipulate cash in a bank vault, and Sui is like a physical wallet where your balance is inherent to the cash you have on hand.

Sui supports splitting and merging of coins that are of the same type. So if you have multiple Coin objects representing your currency, you can merge them into a single object. You can also take a single Coin object and split it into multiple Coin objects of the same type. 

Transferring

When transferring tokens on Ethereum, you call the

transfer

function of the token contract. This function validates that you have the balance you are transferring, then deducts your balance and increases the balance of the address you transferred to, acting similar to a physical ledger.

On Sui, because you literally own the Coin objects, you just send the Coin object to another address. There is no central location that needs to be informed of the transaction to ensure the balances are kept up to date. The action of sending an owned object from one wallet to another does not impact the rest of the blockchain. 

Sending an object in this manner is called a single-owner transaction, and does not require consensus by the blockchain. As such, Sui executes single-owner transactions in parallel, achieving finality very quickly. Only shared objects on Sui require consensus.

Spending

Ethereum users are familiar with the Approve concept. Whenever you interact with any DeFi protocol, you must first approve this protocol to spend your tokens on your behalf. When you swap on Uniswap, for example, the approved router calls the transfer function in the token contract. The token contract then validates that the caller is either the owner or an approved address.

Sui doesn’t have this construct. If you own an object, you are the only party able to transfer it. There is no way for another entity to withdraw that object from your wallet. Instead, protocols on Sui take Coin objects as inputs. For example, to call the swap function on a decentralized exchange, you must pass your Coin object into the swap function, giving ownership of the object to the protocol. Now that the protocol owns this Coin object, it can swap it to another Coin object of your desired type and transfer it to your wallet.

Understanding Sui

Developers experienced on Ethereum and other blockchains who are interested in building on Sui will find many similar paradigms. Tokens, for example, serve many of the same practical purposes. However, developers who don't take the time to learn the underlying differences described above will get tripped up.

Then again, developers experienced in traditional object-oriented programming environments will find similar structures in Sui. It's intuitive to think of an object as a thing that you can store in a wallet or manipulate through code. 

If you would like to learn more about creating tokens on Sui, check out the documentation.

Sui DeFi decentralized exchanges Cetus and Aftermath Finance, in conjunction with the Sui Foundation, announced the launch of new incubators, giving fledgling projects additional paths to viability. Both DeFi projects have a long history on Sui, launching with Mainnet last year, and currently sit in the top five based on total value locked (TVL). The longevity and success of both projects positions them to offer critical expertise to new projects.

Projects accepted to the incubators can count on technical, operational, and business advice, and accelerated grant funding plus a myriad of additional support from the Sui Foundation. Both Cetus and Aftermath boast successful track records, as they played key roles in Sui's meteoric rise to one of the top DeFi blockchains. Sui Foundation will make an initial contribution of $2 million towards the project teams accepted into the incubators, and will commit to further investments should a large number of high-caliber teams and projects surface.

Aftermath offers an array of DeFi services, including trading, staking, and bridging. It won first place in Sui's liquid staking hackathon last year with its afSUI token. Liquid staking, which lets users leverage their staked tokens, has become one of Aftermath's essential services. Its smart order routing technology, relying on Sui's extraordinarily quick settlement times, optimizes trading activity. 

Cetus' DeFi services combine trading, contributing to pools, and bridging, among other activities, and boasts over $150 million in TVL. It gives users a path to interact with DeepBook, Sui's first native liquidity layer. Along with retail services, Cetus also offers what it calls liquidity as a service, supporting integrations with Sui apps..

The launch of these incubators represents a major step in further decentralizing the Sui ecosystem, as it extends governance of ecosystem investments into the hands of proven builders who have supported Sui's advancement and growth from the beginning.

Builders interested in taking their projects to the next level can apply for the Aftermath incubator and Cetus' Aquarium incubator.

Mesh, an embedded finance company enabling seamless cryptocurrency transfers, now supports SUI. With over 300 exchanges and wallets integrated into its technology, users can now easily transfer their SUI to and from popular wallets and exchanges, including Coinbase and Binance. 

Mesh's technology, which overcomes traditional Web3 user pain points when transferring tokens, dovetails with Sui's focus on making the blockchain easier to use through products such as zkLogin and sponsored transactions. Both Mesh and Sui preserve security while giving users a seamless experience.

Mesh technology makes it very simple to transfer SUI and other cryptocurrency between wallets and exchanges.

Through Mesh's core products, such as Mesh Ramp and Mesh Deposit, users can instantly transfer and buy SUI through their wallets and existing exchange accounts. The technology makes extensive know-your-customer processes and copying addresses unnecessary.

Onboarding SUI to its platform lets wallet makers integrate Mesh technology, enabling its seamless token transfers. Preserving security, the Mesh platform does not touch assets nor does it store any user personal identifiable information. 

Builders interested in integrating Mesh's technology can get started through its documentation. 

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.

Many things can be encompassed within the term blockchain infrastructure, but the backbone of a blockchain network is the individual computers that interact directly with the network. These entities, often called nodes, come in different types, such as full nodes, which maintain a complete copy of the blockchain, and validator nodes, which are the arbiters of consensus. The landscape of blockchain nodes goes beyond just these two types. Together the various types of nodes work in harmony to create distributed blockchain networks like Sui.

Validator nodes achieve consensus

Validator nodes play a crucial role in achieving consensus within blockchain networks that utilize consensus mechanisms, such as Proof of Stake (PoS). These nodes are responsible for validating transactions and creating new blocks. Validators stake the blockchain's native token, such as SUI, as collateral to participate in the consensus process and are rewarded for their contribution to network security. Validator nodes are essential for maintaining the integrity and security of PoS-based blockchains.

Validators each independently verify the validity of transactions and together achieve consensus on valid transactions. Through a combination of cryptographic algorithms and economic incentives, validator nodes collectively ensure the immutability and trustworthiness of the blockchain ledger. Their efforts not only facilitate transaction processing but also safeguard the network against malicious attacks and fraudulent activities, thereby fostering trust and confidence among network participants.

Full nodes create immutable records

At the heart of every blockchain network lies a set of full nodes. These nodes serve as the backbone, maintaining a complete, up-to-date copy of the blockchain ledger. Every transaction, from the genesis block to the latest addition, is recorded and stored by these nodes. Their role is pivotal in ensuring the integrity and immutability of the blockchain. Full nodes are often used in tandem with validator nodes in the consensus process by collecting transactions that need to be validated and providing data on previous transactions relevant to those that are new.

Full nodes are crucial not only for validators to understand the network state but also to propagate transactions across the network. Their comprehensive view of the ledger enables full nodes to detect and reject invalid transactions, whether they are intentionally malicious or innocently illegitimate. Other infrastructure, such as wallets, apps, and other nodes, often require a full node to serve as reliable sources of blockchain data.

Node pruning and archival nodes

Node pruning is a technique commonly employed by full nodes to manage storage space efficiently. With node pruning, full nodes discard older transaction data from their storage, retaining only a subset of the blockchain's history. This selective pruning helps reduce the storage requirements of full nodes while still allowing them to participate effectively in the network. 

However, not all nodes employ pruning, and those that opt not to prune data are often referred to as archival nodes. Archival nodes preserve the entire transaction history of the blockchain network, holding onto every transaction ever recorded. These nodes serve as comprehensive repositories of blockchain data, invaluable for tasks such as auditing, research, and analysis. While archival nodes require more storage space and resources compared to pruned nodes, they offer a complete and unaltered record of the blockchain's evolution over time.

Light nodes offer streamlined access

In contrast to full nodes, light nodes operate with a trimmed-down version of the blockchain. These nodes store only the bare essential transaction history to maintain a snapshot of the current blockchain state. This is accomplished by frequently pulling the most recent data from a full node and pruning the previous data. Light nodes are more resource-efficient and are often used in environments where storage space and bandwidth are limited, such as mobile devices. They let users interact with the blockchain without the overhead of storing the entire ledger.

Light nodes emphasize efficiency and speed, facilitating swift and seamless access to blockchain data. By delegating storage and validation tasks to full nodes, light nodes provide a less cumbersome and user-centric interface, enhancing the accessibility of blockchain technology to a wider audience. Despite their reduced functionality vis-à-vis full nodes, light nodes serve as vital conduits for expanding the reach and adoption of blockchain networks across diverse platforms and devices.

Oracles bring real world data onchain

In addition to the traditional nodes that participate in consensus and store blockchain data, oracles serve as bridges between blockchain networks and the real world. Oracles provide blockchain networks with external data, such as market prices, weather conditions, or sports scores, enabling smart contracts to execute based on real-time information. By incorporating offchain data into onchain transactions, oracles enhance the functionality and utility of blockchain applications, paving the way for a new era of finance, supply chain management, and more.

Infrastructure on Sui is unique

Sui's novel directed acyclic graph (DAG) structure makes the details of how nodes operate on Sui a bit different from typical blockchain networks. The end user will only experience more performant reads and writes to the network as Sui’s infrastructure has been developed based on rigorous academic study and experimentation from both the Mysten Labs team and top academic researchers.

The novelty of Sui’s infrastructure is unparalleled as it leverages its unique data model and architecture to achieve remarkable feats. For example, Mysticeti, a new consensus algorithm, lets validators reach consensus on shared-object transactions in around 500 milliseconds and around 250 milliseconds for owned-object transactions. Additionally, Pilotfish, a new execution engine, will enable validators to deploy additional worker nodes to assist in periods of high demand, improving scalability. This is in contrast to similar horizontal scaling solutions which often require validators to run additional nodes at all times. 

Nodes in harmony

Blockchain nodes form the foundation of decentralized networks, facilitating transaction validation, consensus, and data storage. From full nodes to light nodes, validator nodes to oracles, each type of node plays a unique and indispensable role in the broader blockchain ecosystem. As blockchain technology continues to evolve and expand its reach, the role of nodes will remain central to the advancement of decentralized innovation across various industries and domains.

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.

The Move programming language prevents reentrancy and includes the owner in object metadata, both critical means of building in security. Sam Blackshear, Co-Founder and CTO at Mysten Labs, talks about how Move was intended as a smart contract language that would handle financial transactions, and needed to help developers write the most secure code possible. 

Continuing development on Move improves its efficiency and the developer experience. Migrate to Move 2024 today!

The Move programming language offers an intuitive coding experience, letting developers quickly come up to speed. Sam Blackshear, Co-Founder and CTO at Mysten Labs, created Move as a language for writing smart contracts that feels more like traditional programming languages, such as JavaScript or Rust. 

Continuing development on Move improves its efficiency and the developer experience. Migrate to Move 2024 today!

At the heart of any blockchain ecosystem lies the indispensable role of wallets, and more specifically mobile wallet apps. Unlike their browser-based counterparts, mobile wallets offer unparalleled accessibility, especially for users who don't have a PC. In Sui, an ecosystem with powerful user-centric and secure primitives such as zkLogin, this significance is magnified. 

Three standout Sui mobile wallets have emerged as key leaders, ordered from the longest running to latest addition: Surf Wallet, Nightly, and Sui Wallet. These platforms not only redefine the boundaries of functionality and ease of use but also serve as catalysts for the ecosystem's growth and evolution.

Surf Wallet

As the first mobile wallet to implement zkLogin, Surf Wallet stands as a trailblazer in the landscape of mobile wallets on Sui. Its distinction lies not only in its ambition to lead in adopting powerful new Sui technology but also in its status as one of the first mobile wallets on Sui. 

Surf Wallet boasts a sleek and intuitive interface, ensuring seamless navigation for users. The embedded browser for apps adds an extra layer of convenience, allowing for easy access to DeFi and other services within the Sui ecosystem. 

Surf wallet offers a user friendly interface allowing users to explore various apps on Sui.

 Check out Surf Wallet for Android and iOS.

Nightly

As the landscape of blockchain technologies continues to expand, Nightly stands out by offering multichain asset management capabilities. Nightly allows users to access assets and apps on multiple chains while seamlessly switching between networks, offering users flexibility in managing their digital assets across multiple ecosystems.

Nightly extends its functionality beyond simply managing tokens but also allowing for mobile NFT transfers. Whether you're a collector of NFTs and other Sui assets or a user looking to operate across multiple chains, Nightly offers a convenient platform tailored to every role and requirement in between.

Nightly allows for users to manage multiple assets in an easy to use way.

Check out Nightly for Android and iOS.

Sui Wallet

As the newest addition to the Sui mobile wallet landscape, Sui Wallet has quickly garnered attention for its innovative features and user-centric design. Sui Wallet introduces zkLogin functionality that transcends platform boundaries, offering users a seamless authentication experience across various devices and services. For example, using zkLogin on both the mobile and browser extension of Sui Wallet allows users to access the same wallet without any workarounds. 

With its emphasis on simplicity and elegance, Sui Wallet offers a clean interface that prioritizes user experience. The embedded browser for apps further enhances its utility, providing users with effortless access to a diverse array of services within the Sui ecosystem.

Sui Wallet ensures that all actions a user needs to perform is straightforward and easy.

Check out Sui Wallet for Android and iOS.

Navigating DeFi with Sui mobile wallets

Mobile wallets have emerged as indispensable tools for increasing adoption of blockchain networks and apps for any ecosystem. They epitomize the blockchain philosophy of fairness and inclusion by enabling a global audience, which is more likely to have phones than PC access, to make use of blockchain transactions. 

Within Sui, Surf Wallet, Nightly, and Sui Wallet stand as great examples of innovative wallet solutions, offering users a gateway to seamless transactions and enhanced security.

Whether you're a seasoned crypto enthusiast or just beginning the journey, these mobile wallets provide functionality, convenience, and security that all users appreciate and need. As the landscape continues to evolve, the importance of a powerful mobile wallet experience will become increasingly important as they are crucial tools empowering users to embrace the future of finance with confidence and ease.

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.

The Move programming language on Sui incorporates three fundamental innovations: the object-centric data model, programmable transaction blocks, and dynamic fields. Sam Blackshear, Co-Founder and CTO at Mysten Labs, created Move just five years ago as a language specifically built for writing smart contracts on a blockchain. These three innovations on Sui increase Move's potential.

Continuing development on Move improves its efficiency and the developer experience. Migrate to Move 2024 today!

The Move programming language stands as a key component of the Sui ecosystem, powering its unique object data model and supporting efficient code through such mechanisms as programmable transaction blocks. Sam Blackshear, Co-Founder and CTO at Mysten Labs, created Move just five years ago. He designed Move specifically for writing smart contracts with a focus on safety.

Continuing development on Move improves its efficiency and the developer experience. Migrate to Move 2024 today!

Multi-signature (multi-sig) wallets and accounts let multiple people access their assets based on specific parameters. A multi-sig wallet might contain a decentralized autonomous organization's (DAO) or other group's communal treasury, for example. The wallet might require 25 percent of the members to sign a transaction before any assets can be moved. 

As opposed to simple one-owner wallets, multi-sig wallets open up a world of possible uses, letting you create game components and commerce apps, as two examples, that can only be unlocked by multiple users. Requiring a quorum of users, or setting other unlock conditions, keeps digital assets secure from a single rogue user raiding an account.

A multi-sig smart contract, written in Move, serves as the primary building block for this type of app on Sui. The multi-sig smart contract presented in this article verifies multi-sig addresses, and supports different combinations of keys, such as 2-of-3 or M-of-N, where M and N are user-defined parameters.

Creating and using the multi-sig checker contract in Move

A multi-sig address is a special type of address that requires multiple signatures to authorize a transaction. A multi-sig checker smart contract derives a multi-sig address from a set of public keys, weights, and a threshold, and compares it with an expected address. 

Multi-sig addresses require multiple signatures to authorize a transaction. They are often used to enhance the security of funds by distributing control among multiple parties. For example, a 2-of-3 multi-sig address requires at least two out of three signers to approve a transaction. Multi-sig addresses can also be used for governance, escrow, or backup purposes.

The multi-sig smart contract performs three functions. It derives multi-sig addresses, verifies them, and can check a sender's multi-sig address.

Derive multi-sig addresses

The multisig module defines the

derive_multisig_address_quiet

which takes three parameters: pks, weights, and threshold. 

The

pks

parameter is a vector of vectors of bytes, representing the public keys of the signers.

The

weights

parameter is a vector of bytes, representing the weights of each signer.

The

threshold

parameter is a 16-bit unsigned integer, representing the minimum sum of weights required to execute a transaction from the multi-signature address.

The function returns an address, which is the derived multi-signature address.

public fun derive_multisig_address_quiet(         pks: vector<vector<u8>>,         weights: vector<u8>,         threshold: u16,     ): address {

 The function performs the following steps:

It defines a variable,

multiSigFlag

, of type 8-bit unsigned integer and assigns it the value 0x03, which is the flag for multi-signature addresses.

let multiSigFlag = 0x03;

It creates an empty vector of bytes called

hash_data

, which will store the data to be hashed.

let hash_data = vector<u8>[];

It gets the lengths of the

pks

and weights vectors and checks that they are equal. If not, it aborts the execution with an error code: ELengthsOfPksAndWeightsAreNotEqual.

let pks_len = pgs.length(); let weights_len = weights.length(); assert!(pks_len == weights_len, ELengthsOfPksAndWeightsAreNotEqual);

It initializes a variable,

sum

, of type 16-bit unsigned integer and assigns it the value 0. It then loops through the weights vector and adds the values of each element to the sum. It then checks that the threshold is positive and not greater than the sum. If not, it aborts the execution with an error code: EThresholdIsPositiveAndNotGreaterThanTheSumOfWeights.

       let mut sum = 0;         let mut i = 0;         while (i < weights_len) {             let w = weights[i] as u16;             sum = sum + w;             i = i + 1;         };         assert!(threshold > 0 && threshold <= sum, EThresholdIsPositiveAndNotGreaterThanTheSumOfWeights);

 It pushes the

multiSigFlag

to the hash_data vector. It then serializes the threshold using the bcs::to_bytes function and appends the result to the hash_data vector.

       hash_data.push_back(multiSigFlag);        let threshold_bytes: vector<u8> = bcs::to_bytes(&threshold);        hash_data.append(threshold_bytes);

It loops through the

pks

and weights vectors and appends the elements of each pair to the hash_data vector.

        let mut i = 0;         while (i < pks_len) { hash_data.append(pks[i]); hash_data.push_back(weights[i]);           i = i + 1;         };

It hashes the

hash_data

vector using the blake2b256 function and converts the result to an address using the address::from_bytes function. It then assigns the address to a variable, ms_address, and returns it.

        let ms_address = address::from_bytes(blake2b256(&hash_data));         ms_address     }

It derives a multi-sig address and returns the multi-sig address.

Verifying multi-sig addresses

The

multisig

module also defines the check_multisig_address_eq, which checks if the created multi-sig address matches the expected address. As we mentioned above, a multi-sig address is a special type of address that requires multiple signatures to authorize a transaction. A multi-sig address is defined by a set of public keys, weights, and a threshold.

The function

check_multisig_address_eq

takes four parameters: pks, weights, threshold, and expected_address. The first three parameters are the same as the ones we used in the previous function, derive_multisig_address_quiet. The last parameter, expected_address, is an address value that we want to compare with the multi-sig address.

   public entry fun check_multisig_address_eq(         pks: vector<vector<u8>>,         weights: vector<u8>,         threshold: u16,         expected_address: address,     ): bool {

The function first calls the function,

derive_multisig_address_quiet

, which creates a multi-sig address from the given public keys, weights, and threshold. This function uses a hash-based algorithm to combine the public keys and the threshold into a 16-byte value, which is then converted into an address.

let ms_address = derive_multisig_address_quiet(pks, weights, threshold);

 The function then compares the multi-sig address with the expected address and returns true if the addresses are equal, and false otherwise.

return (ms_address == expected_address)

The function

check_multisig_address_eq

can be used to verify that a multi-sig address is correct and matches the expected value. This can be useful for testing, debugging, or auditing purposes. For example, one could use this function to check that a multi-sig address is consistent with the public keys and the threshold that were agreed upon by the signers.

Checking the sender’s multi-sig address

Finally, the

multisig

module also defines the check_if_sender_is_multisig_address, which checks if the sender is the same multi-sig address that is derived from the provided pks, weights, and threshold.

The

check_if_sender_is_multisig_address

takes four parameters: pks, weights, threshold, and ctx. The first three parameters define the multi-sig address scheme, while the last parameter provides the transaction context.

The

pks

parameter is a vector of vectors of bytes, representing the public keys of the signers.

The

weights

parameter is a vector of bytes, representing the weights of each signer.

The

threshold

parameter is a 16-bit unsigned integer, representing the minimum sum of weights required to execute a transaction from the multi-sig address.

Finally, the

ctx

is a mutable reference to the TxContext, which contains information about the current transaction, such as the sender.

   public fun check_if_sender_is_multisig_address(         pks: vector<vector<u8>>,         weights: vector<u8>,         threshold: u16,         ctx: &mut TxContext     ): bool {

The

check_if_sender_is_multisig_address

function calls the check_multisig_address_eq function, which compares the multi-sig address with the sender address.

      check_multisig_address_eq(pks, weights, threshold, ctx.sender())             }

The function

check_multisig_address_eq

returns true if the sender address matches the multi-sig address scheme, and false otherwise.

Get started with multi-sig

Multi-sig addresses are useful for scenarios where there is a need for enhanced security, accountability, or collaboration among multiple parties. Given the valuable digital assets stored on Sui, a multi-sig address can help keep those assets secure.

The smart contract described in this article can help you get started building applications designed for collaboration and joint custody of assets. As a further resource, you can look at the source code and documentation for this project on GitHub.

Continuing work on zkLogin, Sui's social login primitive, resulted in two significant improvements, multi-signature recovery and support for Apple accounts. These changes allow greater choice for users and a powerful new way to recover accounts if the zkLogin credential issuer or app is no longer active.

Thanks to Sui’s cryptographic agility, zkLogin lets builders integrate social logins with their apps. Instead of requiring users to connect a wallet or manually create a new account, apps using zkLogin offer users the ability to create a Sui address with an existing account from companies such as Google and Facebook. The zero knowledge proof technology behind zkLogin eliminates the need for the user to handle any cryptographic sensitive material, such as the private key.

When zkLogin launched last year, it supported Google, Twitch, and Facebook accounts. The addition of Apple support helps users who prefer to stick with Apple for all their social logins. This new authentication method particularly benefits iOS users, as it allows iPhone apps to easily support Sui wallet creation. 

Multi-signature, or multi-sig, opens up a new means of account recovery geared towards both security and ease of use. As zkLogin assumes the liveliness of the application client ID and its issuer, such as Google, multi-sig provides significant improvements to the recoverability of a zkLogin account.

By creating a multi-sig wallet with zkLogin and another private key as backup, a user can still access their wallet if the original app or credential issuer goes away. If a builder, for example, takes down their app which included accounts created through zkLogin, users could enter their private key and recover any assets they had in that account, moving them to another wallet.

The integration of multi-sig with zkLogin also opens the door to more complex use cases, where builders can include up to 10 zkLogin accounts among different credential providers, with customizable weights and thresholds. 

For example, a multi-sig address with a threshold of two could include multiple public keys with different weights. The original owner's Google account could be given a weight of two in this multi-sig scheme and additional signatures, a separate Apple account and a Facebook account, could each be assigned a weight of one. The threshold of two means the Google account, because it has been assigned a weight of two, can always open the multi-sig account by itself. The Apple and Facebook accounts, however, would both be needed to open the multi-sig account, as each by itself does not meet the threshold requirement. 

These updates to zkLogin support overall work on making Sui the most widely accessible blockchain. Creating mass user adoption brings the benefits of digital asset ownership to the world at large.

Start building on Sui and onboard the next generation of blockchain users.

In early May last year, Sui's Mainnet made its public debut, actualizing the promise and proof points made by this next generation technology on Devnet and Testnet. As we reach Sui Mainnet's first anniversary, we look back on a year of growth and new, innovative features.

With its scalable architecture and performant consensus engine, Sui is built to handle massive traffic. And although we've seen peaks hitting over 5,000 transactions-per-second in its first year, the network has not yet reached its limit. By December of 2023 Sui hosted over nine million active accounts, and is well over 10 million now.

DeFi growth was absolutely extraordinary, with Total Value Locked rising from $100 million in early November last year to over $500 million in February.

Beyond metrics, Sui continues to see impressive development, with new features making it accessible and even more performant. zkLogin is an incredibly powerful tool builders leverage to onboard more users, while Pilotfish and Mysticeti promise to maintain Sui's performance edge.

Notable developments

May 3, 2023

Sui Mainnet launches, opening up the network to unfettered public use. Supported by over 100 Validators and over 400 nodes, builders can launch their apps and bring Sui's innovative features to the public.

DeepBook, Sui's first native liquidity layer, launches. This central limit order book gives DeFi protocols and other app builders a mechanism to support both market and limit token swaps.

July 12, 2023

July 15, 2023

Sui celebrates hosting one million active accounts, an early indicator of network utilization.

Sui executes over 65 million transactions in one day, the most recorded on a blockchain ever and proof of its scalability. Other metrics for Sui Mainnet's first three months include hitting 5,414 transactions per second without causing a gas fee spike.

July 26, 2023

August 15, 2023

Momentum continues to grow as Sui reaches three million active accounts.

zkLogin, an innovative new primitive, launches on Sui, letting builders incorporate authorization through existing credentials from providers such as Google, Facebook, and Twitch. zkLogin greatly eases the onboarding path for new Web3 users.

September 13, 2023

October 19, 2023

DeFi shows substantial growth, with combined activity from protocols showing Total Value Locked rising 341 percent and volume rising 229 percent over three months.

Using the technology behind zkLogin, zkSend launches in beta, giving users a seamless means of sending tokens to anyone, even those not yet using Sui.

November 2, 2023

November 3, 2023

As a new user milestone, Sui records seven million active accounts.

Combined Total Value Locked for DeFi protocols on Sui crosses the $100 million mark, showing continued DeFi growth.

November 8, 2023

November 27, 2023

Nine million accounts became active on Sui, as new users onboarded through the many engaging projects on the network.

Move, Sui's native programming language, sees continual development from the community, with the Move 2024 edition introducing crucial new features.

January 17, 2024

February 4, 2024

Sui crosses the $500 million mark in Total Value Locked, signaling immense and rapid growth fueled by the network's innovative DeFi protocols.

Over a 30-day period, DeFi users bridge more value from Ethereum to Sui than to all other blockchains combined.

February 15, 2024

March 20, 2024

New research results in Pilotfish, an innovation in consensus that improves the scalability of transaction execution.

Capping off a year filled with events around the world, Sui hosts Basecamp, a summit which hosted over 1,000 attendees, 44 sessions, and over a 100 speakers.

April 10-11, 2024

April 10, 2024

Despite being the fastest blockchain, Sui keeps its foot on the pedal with Mysticeti, a redesign of the consensus engine allowing for even greater transaction speeds and reduced latency.

Sui original contributor Mysten Labs releases Enoki, a service platform combining technologies to make onboarding users easier than ever.

April 10, 2024

April 11, 2024

First Digital Labs chooses Sui as its first non-Ethereum venue for the FDUSD stablecoin, giving DeFi users a non-volatile value store.

Sui launches the Overflow Hackathon, its biggest competitive coding event ever, giving participants six weeks to build and a $1 million prize pool.

April 21, 2024

Over the last year, the Sui community delivered again and again, creating the projects and features contributing to the network's overall success. As we enter the next year of Sui, we look forward to exciting new projects and furthering the most innovative technology in the world.

Build on Sui and be part of the action.