Author: Zhou Zhou, Foresight News

The reason I chose Sui is that it has a clear development direction, which is not something every public chain possesses," several founders from the Sui project shared with me.

A developer who has been building in the Sui ecosystem for nearly two years commented: "The Move language that needs to be used behind Sui gives me a sense of a language coming from a big company, very standardized, reducing the difficulty for beginners to get started, making it easier for developers to learn." This is one of Sui's many distinctive features.

In our conversation, I discovered that Sui's highly differentiated characteristics and style are evident in many areas, and these styles are precisely what other public chains lack. For example, Sui provides many project parties with grants in US dollars rather than its own tokens; Sui strictly requires that projects receiving grants maintain brand separation from Sui's official brand; and Sui is determined to make significant strides in the gaming sector, among other things.

This makes 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 also host several offline events. I attended several 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 industry practitioners, making it one of the most focused public chains in the current industry. In just one month, Sui's TVL rose from 600 million dollars to 1 billion dollars, nearly doubling. Meanwhile, the token price surged from 0.8U to 2U in a little over a month, with the highest increase approaching three times. Some practitioners have referred to Sui as a Solana killer.

So, why has Sui risen so quickly, and who are the capital forces behind it? What differentiates Sui from other public chains, and what innovative applications does it have? Is Sui's growth a long-term phenomenon or a short-term speculative behavior?

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

A Unique SUI

Sui is a unique presence in the cryptocurrency industry, and many of its actions reflect this.

Evan Cheng, CEO of Mysten Labs, the company behind Sui, grew up in Kaohsiung, a city in southern Taiwan. He joined Apple in 2005 and later transitioned to Facebook in 2017, where he served as the Director of Programming Language Engineering and led some internal cryptocurrency enthusiast groups.

After some time, he became the platform development director for Libra, driving the development of the Move language. Mysten Labs has several co-founders, including Adeniyi Abiodun and Sam Blackshear, who also came from Facebook's Libra project. The experience of working on well-known projects in large companies has naturally been "inherited" by Sui.

Sui's first characteristic is its focus on the gaming sector.

Adeniyi, one of the co-founders, mentioned in an interview with Grayscale this month: "We chose the gaming industry because it is often 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 a large number of game developers, including three major public companies in South 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 also the same. He has repeatedly mentioned on Twitter and in video discussions the gaming device SuiPlay launched by Sui. In recent weeks, whether it’s SuiPlay or the leading meme FUD on Sui, promises of rewards and airdrops have been made to SuiPlay holders.

Sui's second characteristic is its strong emphasis on compliance. Web3 itself advocates a culture of decentralization and permissionless interaction, and most Web3 organizations do not prioritize compliance. However, Sui is an exception.

A practitioner close to Mysten Labs told me that the compliance processes within Mysten Labs are very strict, almost resembling those of a large Web2 company.

Another entrepreneur from the Sui ecosystem mentioned: "Sui provides grants to project parties in US dollars, not Sui tokens, which surprised me greatly. Moreover, Sui's official requirements include cumbersome and complex documentation, KYC, and account verifications, which often take a long time to obtain grants."

Almost every person I encountered in the Sui ecosystem mentioned 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 expressed that he believes for those projects officially recognized by Sui, such as Cetus and Scallop, you don't need to worry about them running away; Sui will cover it.

This strategy is completely different from many public chains. For example, Blast explicitly informs users that it is not responsible for any issues with projects in its ecosystem. Sui and Blast represent two extreme directions: Blast takes no responsibility, while Sui's strict compliance requirements have left some developers with the impression that as long as a project is recognized by Sui's official team, users don't need to worry too much about rug pulls.

This reflects a significant strategic issue, which is also the third characteristic of Sui: Sui's goal is to focus on collaborations with large Web2 institutions to achieve mass adoption. Many traditional large institutions do not allow partnerships with tainted organizations. In many traditional large institutions, this is something that must be adhered to.

This also explains some phenomena, such as Sui and its three founders almost having no habit of engaging in CX memes, which seems to be out of place. Both Base's founder Jesse and Solana's founder Toly have guided and supported meme culture. Sui, on the other hand, either does not engage in this or does so very rarely, as Sui does not want actions that may be considered tainted by traditional institutions to affect its opportunities for collaboration with large institutions.

Sui's differentiated development: compliance in the U.S. and a thriving Chinese ecosystem.

Sui is a public chain that aims to be compliant in the United States and collaborates deeply with well-known gaming companies from around the world. 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 with me.

Chen believes this may be related to Sui's clear development direction, as Chinese entrepreneurs often outperform European and American teams in speed and efficiency once a system has clarified its development direction.

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 using the Move language, Sui and Aptos are the most significant, competing for the leading position among Move public chains, prompting developers to frequently compare these two chains.

"From a personal subjective perspective, Sui's official tweets often provide updates on technical and product function directions, while Aptos seems to focus less on this and emphasizes event-related content instead. This appears to be a small difference between Sui and Aptos," Chen said.

Sui has clear goals: to develop games and collaborate with large Web2 companies. However, as an entrepreneur in the Sui ecosystem who is not focused on gaming or large institutions, this does not seem to affect Chen's confidence in developing on Sui. Chen stated this is because Sui's founding team has a relatively clear development direction rather than being scattered and inconsistent, which often leaves builders in the ecosystem confused. Currently, many public chains lack a clear direction, leading practitioners to feel lost, but this does not seem to be a concern on Sui.

Some practitioners believe Sui is a public chain with a very clear goal. This is quite different from many public chains that have no clear differentiation or direction. This characteristic seems to bring many different changes to the Sui ecosystem.

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