Author: Zhou Zhou, Foresight News

"The reason I chose Sui is that it has a clear development direction, which is not something all public chains possess," several founders of Sui projects told me.

A developer who has been building in the Sui ecosystem for nearly two years commented: "The Move language that Sui needs to use gives me the feeling of a language coming from a large company; it is very standardized and lowers the difficulty for newcomers, making it easier for developers to learn." This is one of the many distinctive features of Sui.

In conversations, I found that Sui's highly differentiated characteristics and style manifest in many ways, and these styles are precisely what other public chains lack. For example, Sui grants many projects in USD rather than its own tokens; Sui strictly requires projects receiving grants to maintain brand separation from Sui officials; Sui's strong determination to enter the gaming track, etc.

These factors make Sui a 'unique' public chain in the cryptocurrency industry.

On October 17, 2024, the 10th Wanxiang Blockchain Conference will be held in Shanghai, and during the same period, Sui will hold several offline events. I participated in a few offline gatherings of Sui and gained a deeper understanding of the development of the Sui ecosystem.

Since September, the price of Sui tokens and TVL have skyrocketed, attracting widespread attention from practitioners in the cryptocurrency industry, making it one of the most关注的公链 in the current industry. In just one month, Sui's TVL rose from $600 million to $1 billion, nearly doubling. The price of the token increased from $0.8 to $2 in just over a month, with a peak increase of almost three times. Some practitioners have dubbed Sui as the Solana killer.

So, why has Sui risen so quickly? Who are the capital backers behind it? What are the differentiating factors between Sui and other public chains, and what innovative applications are there? Is Sui's growth a long-term phenomenon or a short-term speculative behavior?

After communicating with several entrepreneurs in the Sui ecosystem, I found some answers.

The Unique SUI

Sui is a unique existence in the cryptocurrency industry, and many behaviors reflect this.

Evan Cheng, CEO of Mysten Labs, the company behind Sui, grew up in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. He joined Apple in 2005 and switched to Facebook in 2017, serving as the director of programming language engineering and leading some of the company's internal cryptocurrency enthusiast groups.

After a period of time, he became the platform R&D director of Libra, promoting the development of the Move language. Mysten Labs has several co-founders, such as Adeniyi Abiodun and Sam Blackshear, who also came from Facebook's Libra project. The experience of working on well-known projects in major companies naturally 'inherited' to Sui.

The first characteristic of Sui is its focus on the gaming track.

One of the co-founders, Adeniyi, stated in an interview this month that they chose the gaming industry because it is typically the earliest adopter of technology, driving the development of AI and high-performance computing. Therefore, Sui focuses on solving ownership issues in games and has successfully attracted many game developers, including three major listed companies in Korea: Nhan Net, Marble, FNC, and NCSoft. Currently, about 75 publishers are developing applications on Sui. A year ago, Sui had only signed contracts with 30 development studios.

CEO Evan Cheng is similar. He has repeatedly mentioned the gaming device SuiPlay in tweets and video dialogues. In recent weeks, both SuiPlay and the leading meme FUD on Sui have promised rewards and airdrops to SuiPlay holders.

Sui's second characteristic is its strong emphasis on compliance. Web3 itself advocates a culture of decentralization and permissionless (no permission needed), and most Web3 organizations do not prioritize compliance. However, Sui is an exception.

A practitioner close to Mysten Labs told me that the internal compliance processes at Mysten Labs are very strict, even feeling a bit like those in large Web2 companies.

Another entrepreneur in the Sui ecosystem said, "Sui grants projects in USD, not Sui tokens, which surprised me greatly." "Moreover, Sui officials require cumbersome and complex documentation, KYC, accounts, etc., which often takes a long time to obtain a grant."

Almost everyone I met from the Sui ecosystem would mention this obvious characteristic of Sui: its emphasis on compliance.

After chatting with several Sui practitioners, I learned that this may be closely related to Sui's strategic direction. One practitioner stated that for those projects officially recognized by Sui, such as Cetus and Scallop, you need not worry about them running away; Sui will cover it.

This is completely different from the strategies of many public chains. For example, Blast explicitly informs users that they are not responsible for any problems with ecosystem projects. Sui and Blast represent two extremes in this regard. Blast takes no responsibility, while Sui's strict compliance requirements leave some developers with the impression that as long as the project is officially recognized by Sui, users need not worry too much about rug pulls.

This reflects a significant strategic issue, which is also Sui's third characteristic: Sui's goal is to focus on collaborating with large Web2 institutions to achieve mass adoption. Many traditional large institutions do not allow collaboration with tainted organizations. This is something that must be done in many traditional large institutions.

This also explains some phenomena, such as Sui and its three founders almost having no habit of CX Meme, which seems out of place. This is because both Base founder Jesse and Solana founder Toly have been guiding and supporting meme culture. Sui does not do this or does so very little, as they do not want their actions to involve behaviors that could be seen as blemishes by traditional institutions, affecting their opportunities for collaboration with large institutions.

Sui's differentiated development: compliance in the United States and prosperity in the Chinese ecosystem.

Sui is a public chain that aims for compliance in the United States and intends to collaborate deeply with well-known gaming companies globally. Interestingly, most leading DeFi projects are founded by Chinese entrepreneurs, such as Cetus, Scallop, and others.

"70% or even over 80% of DeFi projects are founded by Chinese entrepreneurs," Chen, an entrepreneur in the Sui ecosystem, shared his observation.

Chen believes this may be related to Sui's clear development direction. Once a system has a clear development direction, Chinese entrepreneurs often outperform their European and American counterparts in speed and efficiency.

Chen also discussed the comparison between Sui and other Move-based public chains.

Currently, there are over 20 public chains based on the Move language, three of which come directly from the Facebook team: Aptos, Sui, and Linera. Among the public chains based on the Move language, the most important ones are still Sui and Aptos, as these two are competing for the leading position among Move public chains, and developers often compare these two chains.

"From a personal subjective perspective, Sui's official tweets often update on technical and product functionality, while Aptos seems to do this less and appears to focus more on event-related content. This seems to be a slight difference between Sui and Aptos," Chen said.

Sui has a clear goal: to focus on gaming and to collaborate with major Web2 companies. However, as a non-gaming-focused and non-large institution, the confidence of Chen, an entrepreneur in the Sui ecosystem, in developing on Sui seems unaffected. Chen stated that this is because Sui's founding team has a relatively clear development direction, rather than being hit-or-miss, leaving the builders in the ecosystem confused. Currently, many public chains lack a clear direction, leaving practitioners feeling lost. In Sui, however, such concerns seem absent.

Some practitioners believe that Sui is a public chain with a very clear goal. This is quite different from many public chains that are hit-or-miss or have no clear differentiation in their development direction. This characteristic seems to have brought many different changes to the Sui ecosystem.

Sui's first year is focused on developing DeFi; in the future, Sui aims to collaborate with large Web2 institutions; Sui intends to concentrate on developing games; Sui wants to be the most compliant public chain. One practitioner summarized the development route of the Sui ecosystem as simple, focused, and clear.