What is Sui (SUI) crypto?

Sui crypto refers to the Sui blockchain and its native token, SUI. Sui is a proof-of-stake layer 1 network designed for fast, parallel transaction processing, and it went live on mainnet in May 2023. It was built by Mysten Labs, a company that came out of Meta's former Diem stablecoin project.

Who built the Sui blockchain?

Sui comes from Mysten Labs. According to Decrypt's launch coverage, Mysten Labs is one of two spinoffs from Diem, the blockchain project Meta (then Facebook) wound down. The other spinoff is Aptos Labs. Both teams kept working with Move, a programming language first created inside the Diem effort.

Mainnet was scheduled to go live on May 3, 2023, right after the SUI token sale ended. Like other layer 1 networks, Sui runs its own validators and does not settle to another chain. If layers are new to you, see what a layer 2 is for the contrast.

What is the Move programming language on Sui?

Sui's docs describe Move as an open-source language for writing safe packages that manipulate onchain objects. Sui changed the original Diem design in an important way. Instead of keeping everything in one global storage area tied to accounts, Sui treats each asset as an object with its own unique ID.

Every transaction declares up front which objects it will touch. That lets the network see which transactions do not overlap and run them at the same time on different processor cores. Transactions that touch shared objects are ordered by consensus first. This model is the core of how smart contracts behave on Sui.

How does Sui compare with Solana?

Both are high-throughput layer 1 chains, but they are built differently. Decrypt notes that Sui is organized around objects, while Solana uses accounts and its programs are usually written in Rust. For more on that chain, see what Solana is.

Sui reaches agreement with a consensus protocol called Mysticeti, where many validators propose blocks in parallel and build a shared graph of them. Sui's docs say Mysticeti needs only three rounds of messages to commit blocks. Those docs also cite benchmark results of about half a second to commit, while noting that these are test figures rather than live network numbers.

What is the SUI token used for?

Sui's docs list four uses for SUI: paying gas fees, staking in delegated proof of stake, serving as a liquid asset inside apps, and voting on governance questions such as protocol upgrades. Total supply is capped at 10 billion SUI, released over time on unlock schedules.

Holders can delegate SUI to a validator. Stakes take effect at the start of the next epoch, and each epoch lasts 24 hours. Validators can charge a commission on rewards. Part of every storage fee goes into a storage fund, which helps pay validators for keeping older data, and users get a partial rebate when they delete stored data.

As of October 2026, the validator entry rules are being updated under a proposal called SIP-39, so check the official docs for current thresholds.