Sui (SUI)

Sui (SUI) is the native cryptocurrency of the Sui blockchain, a proof-of-stake network designed for fast, low-cost transactions. SUI pays transaction and storage fees, is staked to secure the network, and is used to vote on protocol changes. Its supply is capped at 10 billion tokens, and its smallest unit is the MIST, one billionth of a SUI.

The blockchain was built by Mysten Labs, a company founded by former engineers of Diem, the stablecoin project that Facebook (later Meta) abandoned in 2022. Sui uses a version of Move, a programming language first developed for Diem, and is often compared with Solana (SOL) and with Aptos, a second network built by former Diem engineers. The Sui Foundation supports its ecosystem.

Imagine a large office where each person keeps their own labelled folders. If you want to hand a folder to a colleague, you can simply do it, without calling a full staff meeting. Only when several people need to change the same shared document at once do they all have to gather and agree. Sui works in a similar way: most assets belong to one owner and can move without the whole network coordinating, which keeps things quick.

SUI is the coin people spend to use that office, both for each action and for the shelf space their data takes up. Holders can lend their SUI to the operators who run the network and receive a share of the rewards, while still owning the coins. The trade-off is that a relatively young network and a small group of large holders carry risks of their own.

Mysten Labs was founded in 2021 by Evan Cheng, Sam Blackshear, Adeniyi Abiodun, George Danezis and Kostas Chalkias, and raised money from venture investors before launch. The Sui mainnet went live on 3 May 2023, with SUI trading on major exchanges the same day and only a small share of supply circulating. In August 2024 the network adopted a new consensus engine, Mysticeti, which cut confirmation times to around half a second. A bug halted block production for about two hours in November 2024. On 22 May 2025 an attacker drained more than 220 million dollars from Cetus, Sui's largest decentralized exchange, by exploiting a flaw in its code; validators blocked about 160 million dollars of the stolen funds, and a stake-weighted vote later approved moving them to a trust for victims. Spot SUI exchange-traded funds began trading in the United States in February 2026.

Sui stores data as objects, each with an owner, a type and a version, rather than as balances in a global ledger. Transactions that touch only objects owned by one account can be confirmed by validators without full ordering, while those touching shared objects, such as a trading pool, go through consensus. Developers write smart contracts in Sui Move, which treats digital assets as resources that cannot be copied or accidentally destroyed. Fees combine a charge for computation and a charge for storage:

• $G$ is the total gas fee paid, in MIST.
• $C$ is the number of computation units the transaction uses, and $p$ is the gas price per unit.
• $S$ is the storage fee for any new data the transaction writes.
• $R$ is the storage rebate returned for data the transaction deletes.

A transaction using $1{,}000$ computation units at a price of $750$ MIST, writing data with a storage fee of $2{,}000{,}000$ MIST and deleting data worth a rebate of $1{,}500{,}000$ MIST, costs $750{,}000 + 2{,}000{,}000 - 1{,}500{,}000 = 1{,}250{,}000$ MIST, or 0.00125 SUI. Storage fees go into a storage fund that pays future validators for keeping the data.

SUI has a fixed maximum of 10 billion tokens, all created at launch and released over time through vesting and a stake subsidy that tops up rewards in the network's early years. Large shares were allocated to the community reserve, Mysten Labs, early contributors and investors, so scheduled token unlocks add to circulating supply each month. Holders can delegate SUI to validators without giving up ownership; see delegated staking.

• Fees and staking. Every transaction pays gas in SUI, and staked SUI decides which validators run the network.
• Decentralized finance. Sui hosts exchanges, lending markets and automated market makers, and stablecoins such as USDC are issued natively on it; see DeFi.
• Gaming and digital collectibles. The object model suits in-game items and NFTs.
• Investment. SUI is held directly and through exchange-traded funds.

The Cetus response divided opinion. Supporters said it returned money to victims quickly; critics argued that if validators can freeze addresses, the network is less resistant to censorship than a public blockchain is meant to be. Others point to the large holdings of insiders and investors, the pressure of ongoing unlocks, and the network's short operating record. Like other smart-contract platforms, Sui also carries the risk that applications built on it are hacked even when the base chain works as designed.

• Sui
• Sui documentation