0x499 author: Dime Tamara

With the growing popularity of the Move language for developing layer 1 blockchains, Sui has gained a lot of momentum over the past few months and is seen as a competitor to the Aptos blockchain — another layer 1 that was founded by ex-Meta employees. Among the biggest news expected in Q1 of 2023 is the launch of Sui mainnet and this has led many Developers and NFT projects to already build their projects in anticipation of the launch.

On December 21, 2022, 0x499 invited Henry a developer at Sui network, Yaman a member from Sui Gallery, Joy the co-founder of Suiet and Jacob the founder of Clutchy, to discuss* “Potential Opportunities of Sui Ecosystem”. *The Event was hosted by 0x499 member and contributor —Ela

Ela: Welcome everyone again to another live event with 0x499 and this is an opportunity to learn and connect with the speakers. I am Ela and I am a member and contributor of 0x499 DAO and I am also a BD manager for Chain IDE, a cloud based multi chain IDE pass. I joined the crypto space in 2020 and I joined the NFT space last year. I would like to have us start with all the guests introducing themselves starting from

Henry: Hello everyone, thank you for having me on the show. I lead the DEV efforts for SUI in Asia. I am currently focussing on the Move language as well as web3 defy and web3 gaming.

Joy: Here is a brief introduction about Suiet. We are working on a wallet on the Sui blockchain and we currently have the largest community around Sui and we are a third party wallet in the Sui ecosystem. We also help developers connect in the Sui ecosystem.

Jacob: Hey everybody, I am Jacob the CEO of Clutchy. We are a marketplace for NFTs focused on Gaming since August this year. We are also looking at building a launchpad for gaming and building some tech for gamer profiles that can be taken into any game environment on the blockchain, like a sort of web3 decentralized ID. My background is in NFTs and gaming and before web3 I used to work on research for a University.

Yaman: Hello, I am one of the cofounders of Sui galleries. We have been developing since June and we are already deploying some NFTs on the devnet. Currently, we are developing some platforms like marketplace but sui gallery is our main focus.

Ela: By now, we have all probably heard of Sui which has gained much traction over the past months on twitter. Sui is a permissionless, layer 1, smart contract blockchain that aims to provide scalability and low latency for simple use cases like transfer of payments, etc. So in order to improve scalability, different public chains have different development ideas. For example, some impose Layer2 or even Layer3 on the basis of Layer1, and some adopt modular or cross-chain solutions. How do SUI and SUI ecology consider this issue？

Henry: I think the key point is that Sui architecture was built from the ground up and this makes it scalable. This means that Sui is able to process arbitrary numbers of transactions spread across many different numbers of servers. The main reason Sui is able to do this is that on Sui, we are able to divide the transaction sets into many smaller subsets and the way we are able to achieve this is based on the smart contract language that Sui uses, which is Move. the main feature that allows this is the Ownership system in move. Basically, when a transaction on Sui is being executed, the first thing that the MoveVm will do is that it will fetch these objects and check who owns them. By having this information, we do not have to order every transaction globally. We only have to order transactions that have shared objects. But there are many transactions that have owned objects. An owned object is one that is owned by a single person or by a single address. So, if I want to transfer something I own to maybe Alex and if someone wants to transfer something they own to Bob, those two transactions do not need to be ordered. This means that we can send them to two different nodes or two different groups and they can be processed fully in parallel. On sui, we call this inter-validator sharding which is similar to sharding but because Sui uses it’s own smart contract language, we do not have to do sharding on layer two ot three but we can do it just between Sui’s validator networks.

Ela: I was doing some research about Sui as well and I saw that the parallel transaction execution allows it to process 120k transactions per second and I felt that was really quick compared to Ethereum and this is part of the uniqueness of Sui.

Joy: Actually, the main difference between the sui blockchain and other blockchains is that the consensus algorithm is different from other blockchains. For example, if people want to change the permissions that do some operations, the permission belongs to the person only. They can perform the operations without complex consensus mechanisms. In this kind of operation, it is super faster and this can save a lot of the network and improve speed on the blockchain. I think this is a very important improvement compared to other blockchains. For other operations, operators need to go to other validators and this is similar with other blockchains but there are some improvements to it and this makes me really bullish on the sui blockchain. Also, Sui has a very good growing community and you can get a quick response from the team if you reach out to them.

Jacob: There are quite a few reasons why we decided to build on Sui. One of these is the tech and one of the reasons for the tech is the promise of scalability like what Henry discussed about inter-sharding. For us, we saw early on that if we are looking at gaming use cases, having the ability to build games where you can mass airdrop can be really interesting. Say for example, if 100,000 people help you test a game, being able to mass-airdrop to everyone’s address without going through full consensus is really exciting. There are other things on the tech side which we are really excited about and i think there are plenty of applications that you can think of when you start trying to utilize this scalability. For us, having a blockchain that is scalable is really important, especially when you think of this mass user situation like in Gaming.

Yaman: I think there are already good examples for the technical aspects. I just want to add what it means for the non developer. On our project, we noticed that Sui merged the web2 experience with web3 and this is a very good inspiration point for us. In the Lisbon event, we started to build an NFT marketplace and Sui provided new instruments and ecosystem for us. I think we have a chance to make a new blockchain without any hick and this is a very good advantage of sui.

Ela: We saw SUI FOUNDATION recently announced the allocation details of SUI Token, and at the same time reviewing the development of Sui Network. What are the highlights you think are worthy of attention?

Henry: So I think that for people who are already users of Sui, the part that is going to be most interesting to them is the share of the tokens going to community access program. We also recently put out more information about that as well. I think there are going to be quite a few ways for people in the community to have access to the tokens. Like if you use some of the applications, or if you help improve our Sui codes by finding bugs or if you are one of the volunteers in our discord channels so there are quite a few ways to qualify. I think another way to qualify is if you come to our offline events. The other part that is more of a general interest is that half of our tokens are controlled by the Sui foundation and that will be for grants. Basically, we are planning a series of hacker houses all around the year in the next year. I know there will be about 5 in Asia and about the same number based in other parts of the world.

Joy: About this, I think Sui desires good allocation of the tokens. I know that the developers near me and our partners agree that the allocation can encourage the community and the entire ecosystem. It can improve the overall participation and interest of the community.

Jacob: My thoughts on this topic is that my main worry at first was not tech but more around community and token. It is really important to make sure that blockchain works well with their community and through looking after early supporters and people that contribute, you can create a very passionate and loyal community of supporters. For example looking at Solana with the token down like 97%, there are still some really loyal people who got in early and contributed early and had a life changing experience. For me, it is important to reward early supporters and I am really excited to see how Henry’s team and those at Mysten Labs are engaging their community and giving them rewards. Clutchy as a platform is also building community and looking after our early supporters.

Yaman: The value is based on the network and we are looking at how Sui is one of the biggest networks we are looking at now. Sui has a really good plan for the long term and that is why they put their tokens into the Sui Foundation. The foundation will help use these tokens to build the community and it is not just about airdropping tokens but making sure that people who add value get rewarded.

Jacob: Just adding to what Yaman said now, I think it is very correct and interesting. We have seen airdrops evolve over the years and there have been forward steps and backward steps and now taking a careful approach so as not to reward the wrong type of behaviors.

Ela: What do you think of your Dapp in the Sui Ecosystem since considering current blockchain needs to meet users different needs?

Henry: Since I am from the layer 1 team, I do not have a specific dapp, so I will just comment in general. From our perspective, we really prefer applications that cater for the largest number of users and also have a good product — market fit. For instance, in terms of DeFi projects, Sui will rather have a straight forward p2p DeFi payment platform that will actually be used by a lot of people than having an exotic options platform that will not be used by that many people.

Joy: Because we are a wallet, we can start from the wallet part. I think Suiet’s perspective is quite different from other communities. For example, we are considering to add the Apple hardware in cross chains algorithms into the web3 wallet app. We also want to improve user experience and security. We communicated with the Sui team and they gave us their support to integrate the Apple security to our wallet. From this point, I think that many Dapps on Sui can do a lot more than other blockchains. For other Dapps, we have a Dapp store page inside our wallet and we have listed a lot of featured and popular Dapps in the Sui ecosystem. For example, MoveX dex, Sui Swap and Turbo. Also, we listed Clutchy on the first column on our page and they are my favourite NFT marketplace. Many teams are also working on building their communities and they did a lot of events during the Fifa world cup.

Jacob: For us, as an application, we feel really happy here because we love the Sui version of the Move language. We enjoy the object centric approach that Yaman referred to earlier. The fact that everything on the chain is kind of like an NFT is really interesting. You can have NFTs that are dynamic, that change and evolve over time and NFTs that combine with each other. For us, this opens a lot of opportunities as well as for the applications and games and other projects that we work with. For example, a project we are speaking to which is building a custom quest platform for communities is able to have NFTs that grow and evolve as you complete tasks. Accomplishing this on other blockchains is much more time consuming and difficult. We also have been quite impressed with projects that have been doing composable trades for NFTs where you can have tradable trades. While this is also possible on other blockchains, it is much more difficult. We also see wallets like Suiet looking for ways to improve security and we have also been working with Suins which is one of the name service that has a much more unique way of doing things. So we are very bullish on the Dapps and the ecosystem of applications that is evolving around us and we are also very bullish on the possibilities that allow us to build unique user experience.

Yaman: I think that the Dapps ecosystem is quite different from other blockchains because Move provides elasticity for builders. In our App, we have experience in Art investment and NFT marketplace but we do not want to focus on this only. We want to design a user experience for different NFT concepts like the composable NFTs which allow you to style your NFT as you like. Because of this, I think we need to design all the experience to suit the elasticity of Sui and we are considering providing elastic tools for the entire ecosystem. We are also analyzing the needs and analyzing other upcoming things. I think that the Sui ecosystem provides a lot of opportunities. Another problem with blockchain is that web2 developers cannot easily migrate to web3 but Sui provides more elasticity which makes this easier.

Ela:In addition to the construction of the SUI itself, which one do you value the development prospects of the SUI ecology? On existing tracks such as wallets, NFTs, GameFi, DAO, etc., will SUI’s ecology do better?

Henry: For Sui, the two areas we are really focussed on now are basically web3 gaming and NFTs. I think we are also going to be focussing on social media tools once that area becomes developed. The main reason for this is because Sui’s technology and architecture is different from classical blockchains. It favors verticals that do not have a lot of shared objects or bottlenecks. These happen to be NFTs and Games. For example, if you think of what happens within a game, most of the gamers interact with their own inventory or with their own character most times and only in a few times will they really interact with other players. In terms of DeFi, we think of it more as a type of infrastructure and not necessarily a consumer product. I think this is not only happening on Sui but kind of like an overall trend. There are many DeFi products that are kind of like phasing and going out of fashion. At sui, we are looking at DeFi as basic infrastructure like finance that helps you trade and buy things. However, you cannot have just finance but you need real world industries and in web3, those are the games and NFTs that will bring you a huge number of users. Only when DeFi is integrated with those, can it really thrive. That is our view.

Joy: I think we can go further than other blockchains because sui gives us the opportunities through the design of sui owned objects. This is kind of like a key to opening up the web3 world. We will leverage the owned objects feature to make suiet wallet as your ID card to the entire sui world. For this kind of design, we can use the Suiet wallet for NFT soul bound tokens and we can also do more for the in-game wallet and we can provide the login and in-game wallet swap features for the gaming scenarios in the sui ecosystem.

Jacob: I like both what Henry and Joy said there. I think more applications need to be aware that they can be infrastructure as well and be optimized for that. Things like having high quality SDKs available so that other parties like consumer apps and games can integrate part of their application to those will become really important. For example Stepn, a game which took of this year was responsible for more volume in decentralized exchanges. That was game changing for Orca. they got more users than when they were targeting users themselves. We need to be more open minded to partnerships and operating in these ways. The same can be said for wallets. I think they can also be infrastructure. Having everything very easy to integrate and approaching new players in the space to use the applications you have developed is really important for the ecosystem of applications and infrastructure of Sui and every blockchain going forward.

Yaman: If I remember correctly, in a Lisbon event, one of our founders joined in and made a presentation where they said that Move is envisioned to bring lots of people to web3. I think it is because of the opportunities. The current projects are mainly fundamental projects. I think Sui has room for new Dapps. For example, Sui ID Dapps have a really good perspective when it comes to making an ID. I think we are really excited about the upcoming developments of the prototypes on sui.

Ela: With the announcement of the details of the SUI Token allocation, does it mean that the main network of SUI is about to be launched. Are SUI and the SUI ecosystem ready for this?

Henry: As you guys can see, we are slowly putting together all the pieces to get our mainnet launched but we still have many things to do. For example, our testnet has four waves and we have only done one so far, while it takes a month to run one wave. We will therefore have at least three more waves of testnet and the next wave begins in January. The earliest time we can talk about Launch will be after March but we are trying to aim for the first half of next year.

Joy: About Sui token, I do not really know but concerning the mainnet launch, I am not able to share a lot on it as well. However, I think that the next round of bull run will start by web3 gaming and Sui ecosystem has a lot of potential for web3 gaming. I think that this is a good time to jump into the Sui ecosystem now and also, early contributors will receive rich rewards from the token allocation.

Jacob: I obviously cannot give any alpha concerning the mainnet launch beyond what Henry has said because I do not know and even if I knew, It would not be proper for me to say. All I can say is that we will be ready and since the network will not go live for quite some time, I think there is a lot of time for builders to come in and for community members to get involved. I encourage everyone to reachout to the guests today.

Yaman: I think that Sui aims to build the blockchain for the next billion users and we have the responsibility of onboarding these users. We are really excited for the upcoming token and mainnet launch and we are preparing for the incoming journey.

Ela: Thank you all for coming, We have learnt a lot today and it has been a really great session.