The unique advantages, ecosystem, token model, and investment value of the Sui public chain
This article will analyze the Sui public chain from multiple perspectives, as well as the investment value of the SUI token IEO.Author: veDAO Research Institute
On April 20, 2023, according to an official Twitter announcement, the public chain project Sui has confirmed that it will launch its mainnet on May 3, and the native token SUI, which was previously sold through cryptocurrency exchanges, will also be unlocked during the mainnet launch period. Regarding the SUI token, the Sui project team has previously made it clear that there will be no airdrop for the SUI token and confirmed on April 15, 2023, that the token sale will be conducted through an IEO (Initial Exchange Offering).
In response to this IEO sale, KuCoin, Bybit, and OKX have announced that they will sell SUI, with a public sale subscription price of 1 SUI = 0.1 USD. However, the community reacted very strongly to the behavior of "no airdrop for SUI tokens," with some netizens commenting under the tweet: NO AIRDROP = NO COMMUNITY. The lack of airdrop incentives to engage active users in the community is indeed very un-Web3, but the Sui team has also included participants who contribute to the public chain ecosystem in the whitelist for purchasing, allowing them to buy SUI at a more favorable price (0.03 USD) and ensuring a quota of 1500 tokens.
So, is the SUI token worth participating in? This article will analyze the Sui public chain from multiple dimensions and provide a comprehensive interpretation of the SUI token IEO information.
Sui Public Chain Features & Advantages
Sui is the world's first permissionless Layer 1 blockchain designed entirely by former Facebook developers. As a decentralized PoS blockchain, Sui achieves horizontal scalability in throughput and storage, aiming to become the first programmable blockchain platform at internet scale. The Sui ecosystem adopts the Rust-based Move programming language and uses the same PoS consensus mechanism as Ethereum. Its main features are as follows:
Strong Scalability: The network can horizontally scale throughput as it can achieve parallel agreements on causally independent transactions. They accomplish this through Byzantine Broadcast, which eliminates the overhead caused by global consensus while not sacrificing safety and liveness guarantees.
Secure Smart Contract Language: Move is a programming language initially developed by Facebook, designed for writing secure smart contracts. It supports cross-chain shared libraries, tools, and developer communities.
Ability to Define Complex On-Chain Assets: Sui's scalability is not limited to transaction processing. Its storage is also low-cost and horizontally scalable. This allows developers to define complex assets with rich attributes that exist directly on-chain, rather than introducing an indirect layer for off-chain storage to save on gas fees.
Better Web3 User Experience: The Sui team aims to make it the most accessible smart contract platform, enabling developers to create excellent user experiences in Web3. To welcome the next billion users, Sui will provide developers with various tools to leverage the powerful capabilities of the Sui blockchain. The Sui SDK will allow developers to build without restrictions.
In summary, Sui's architecture is known for instant settlement and high throughput, rich on-chain assets, and an excellent Web3 experience. Its horizontally scalable throughput and storage can achieve efficient DApp development at a lower cost.
Team Overview
The development team of Sui is Mysten Labs, founded by Evan Cheng, Adeniyi Abiodun, Sam Blackshear, George Danezis, and Kostas Kryptos, all of whom participated in the Novi and Diem projects at Facebook.
The project announced the completion of a $36 million Series A funding round in December 2021, led by a16z, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, NFX, Slow Ventures, Scribble Ventures, Samsung NEXT, Lux Capital, and others. On September 8, 2022, it raised $300 million in a Series B funding round led by FTX Ventures, with other investors including Coinbase Ventures, Jump Crypto, a16z, Circle Ventures, Binance Labs, and O'Leary Ventures.
The decision to conduct an IEO before the project's mainnet launch has led many netizens to question whether the Sui project team is facing funding shortages due to the FTX collapse last year. However, some clarified that the Sui project team had already used up the $100 million invested in the FTX project and there is no need for concern.
Sui Ecosystem Project Overview
As of now, the Sui ecosystem has attracted many teams to build projects, and several early-stage quality projects have received grants from Sui, distributed across cross-chain, SocialFi, traffic, DeFi, and other tracks. Here are four projects that have received grants from the Sui project team:
SUIA: The first POAP application on Sui, it is a social dApp built on the Sui network, aiming to create an open, powerful, and community-driven social network. SUIA has made four innovations: personalized NFT recommendations, an information stream based on on-chain activities, NFT-based brand clubs, and composable personal spaces. In terms of data, SUIA currently has over 200,000 users, 50 core brands, and more than 300,000 community members. It has received the Sui Grant from the Sui Foundation and funding from Sui Builder Heroes. Its next step will enable more social features for users, such as community games and social trading.
ComingChat: ComingChat is a SocialFi product designed to address the fragmented experience of Web3 products. It also incorporates some aspects related to ChatGPT, providing users with a Web3 portal application that supports multiple public chains and offers DeFi and GameFi functionalities. At the application layer, ComingChat includes features such as DID, wallets, encrypted communication, social networking, DeFi, and GameFi. At the protocol layer, ComingChat aims to support a multi-chain ecosystem.
MovEX: MovEX is the first AMM+ order book hybrid liquidity DEX on Sui, combining the advantages of AMM and order books to provide a liquidity trading experience for everyone by creating hybrid liquidity pools. Internally, MovEX has a settlement engine that allocates orders between AMM and order books, minimizing slippage for traders while ensuring fairness for liquidity providers. Liquidity providers can also customize price ranges to provide unilateral liquidity, effectively managing impermanent loss.
Movernance: Movernance is the first fully functional on-chain governance platform in the Sui ecosystem. It provides necessary decentralized governance for projects by integrating governance forums and on-chain voting functionalities. Movernance innovatively proposes a permissioned governance framework and a governance rights market (bribery platform), enhancing the overall efficiency of decentralized governance and providing a solid foundation for large-scale applications of projects.
Currently, the development of the Sui ecosystem is relatively balanced and in a healthy and positive state. The projects granted by the official foundation are all based on the core needs of a public chain, hoping to help the entire ecosystem build and develop in an orderly manner. As for these projects themselves, there are not many innovations and highlights, but it is believed that after the foundational construction of the public chain is completed, more fresh and creative projects will emerge in the Sui ecosystem.
Token Economic Model
The total supply of SUI tokens is 10 billion, allocated as follows: 50% to community reserves, 20% to early contributors, 14% to investors, 10% to the Mysten Labs treasury, and 6% to the community access program IEO and application testers. The tokens have four main application scenarios: network staking, transaction fees, storage fees, governance voting, and SUI native asset trading tools.
The five core components of the economic model:
Proof of Stake (PoS) mechanism is used to select, incentivize, and reward the behaviors of Sui platform operators (i.e., validators and SUI delegators).
All network operations incur gas fees, which are used to reward participants in the proof of stake mechanism and prevent spam and denial-of-service attacks.
Sui's storage fund is used to transfer staking rewards over time and compensate future validators for the storage costs of previously stored on-chain data.
On-chain voting is used for governance and protocol upgrades.
SUI tokens are the native asset of the Sui platform.
Unlike the token economics models of traditional proof-of-stake chains, Sui's token economics model adds the functionality of a storage fund. Since a blockchain is a data structure that only increases, the amount of data that needs to be maintained on-chain will increase over time, leading to higher costs. This means that later users of Sui will need to pay higher fees than early users. The storage fund is designed to address this issue, allowing early users to pay more fees so that all users can use the network at similar fee levels.
Additionally, Sui's storage fund will also pay validators in the system or those who actually store blockchain data and complete data maintenance tasks. As maintenance work increases, the expenses for validators will also rise, which will incentivize more people to become validators in the system. As more people become validators, the total available storage space will also increase, further leading to a decrease in gas fees for writing to the blockchain. Sui's token economics model is a typical representative of a highly scalable chain economic model, using game theory to ensure that gas fees remain relatively constant throughout the blockchain's lifecycle.
IEO and Whitelist Purchase Details
This IEO will take place on three major exchanges, with the latest sale details as follows:
KuCoin: 2.25E SUI (not available for mainland users)
Group A public sale will take place from April 15, 08:00 to April 22, 24:00 (UTC+8). KuCoin will randomly snapshot users' total balances of USDT, USDC, ETH, and KCS every hour to determine the number of lottery tickets each user can ultimately obtain. After the scheduled period ends, winners will be selected through a lottery.
Group B whitelist sale will take place from April 20, 09:30 to April 22, 24:00 (UTC+8). All whitelist users must complete all subscription processes. This round is only applicable to early contributors of Sui and must be Sui whitelist users. You can click the link to check eligibility: https://verifysupporters.sui.io/. Sui has contacted whitelist users via email, and users can participate in KuCoin using the email address associated with their allocated accounts.
Bybit: 9.4E SUI (not available for mainland users)
Subscription will be conducted on Bybit's token sale platform, ByStarter.
Subscription period: April 21, 12:00 to April 24, 08:59 (UTC+8).
Allocation period: April 24, 09:00 to April 24, 13:59 (UTC+8).
Results announcement: April 24, 14:00 (UTC+8).
OKX: 2.25E SUI (available for mainland users)
Subscription will be conducted on OKX's token sale platform, JumpStart.
Subscription period: April 23, 10:00 to April 24, 10:00 (UTC+8).
Winning statistics: April 24, 10:00 (UTC+8).
Token distribution begins: April 24, 18:00 (UTC+8).
Whitelist eligibility:
Early participants who joined the Sui Discord community before February 1, 2023, who provided suggestions, participated in discussions, interacted with ecosystem projects, and advocated for technological innovation, making significant contributions to the development of the Sui ecosystem. (Approximate draw probability is 20%)
Winners selected through social media voting in the Capy Holidays competition of Testnet Wave 1 will receive SUI rewards according to the specified competition terms.
Members who participated in organizing and operating Builder Houses and other important events, demonstrating their love for Sui and dedicating significant time and effort, will receive SUI rewards after the mainnet launch.
Investment Value Discussion
Sui is often compared to Aptos, as both projects were founded by former Facebook employees. While Aptos is certainly commendable, Sui is viewed as a more advanced version, with a more solid and superior technical foundation. Aptos currently has a fully diluted valuation of $13 billion and a circulating market cap of $2.3 billion. Given that the market assigns such a high valuation to Aptos, Sui is also likely to have a very high valuation.
The public sale plan for Sui's IEO has indeed left many community users disheartened, which is detrimental to the future construction of the community and has caused many active participants to lose confidence. Objectively speaking, although the Sui project team is not skilled in marketing, this IEO has still generated a lot of discussion and attention within the community, and the technical and stability aspects of the Sui public chain are commendable.
Overall, with a strong team background, referencing APT, Sui may achieve a very high valuation. The current IEO has also led to significant speculation and attention for SUI in the market, potentially creating strong FOMO emotions. However, the shortcomings in the Sui team's market operations raise concerns, and the funding issues related to FTX cannot be completely clarified.
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