What Is Sui (SUI)? The Next-Gen Layer 1

Last updated: October 2026

What is Sui?

Sui is a layer 1 blockchain: an independent network with its own validators, consensus and native token (SUI), not a scaling layer on top of Ethereum. It was built by Mysten Labs, a company founded by former Meta engineers who worked on Meta’s abandoned Diem blockchain, and its mainnet launched on May 3, 2023. Sui’s distinguishing idea is that everything on chain is an “object” with an owner. Transactions that touch unrelated objects can be processed in parallel, and simple transfers can skip full consensus altogether. Smart contracts are written in Sui Move, a language designed to make common asset bugs harder to write.

Key takeaways

• Type: proof-of-stake layer 1. SUI pays gas, secures the network through staking and votes in governance.
• Supply: fixed at 10 billion SUI, with a large share still unlocking on a published schedule.
• Notable features: parallel execution, zkLogin (create a wallet with a Google or Apple account), and sponsored transactions where apps pay users’ gas.
• Notable controversy: validators froze about $162M stolen in the May 2025 Cetus exploit, which sparked a debate about how decentralized Sui really is.
• Access: US spot SUI ETFs have traded since February 2026, and about 41% of the 10 billion supply circulated by October 2026.

History: from Meta’s Diem to an independent chain

Sui’s story begins inside Facebook (now Meta). From 2019 Meta tried to launch a global stablecoin, first called Libra and later Diem, with its own blockchain and a new smart contract language, Move, created by engineer Sam Blackshear. Regulators pushed back hard, and Meta wound the project down in early 2022. Two startups came out of it with Move and much of Diem’s research: Aptos Labs and Mysten Labs.

Mysten Labs was founded in 2021 by five Diem veterans: Evan Cheng (CEO), Sam Blackshear (CTO), Adeniyi Abiodun (chief product officer), George Danezis (chief scientist) and Kostas Chalkias (chief cryptographer). Their bet was that the Diem design could be rebuilt around assets rather than accounts. Mysten raised a $36 million Series A led by a16z crypto in December 2021. In September 2022 it announced a $300 million Series B at a valuation above $2 billion, led by FTX Ventures with participation from a16z, Jump Crypto, Apollo, Binance Labs, Franklin Templeton, Coinbase Ventures and others. FTX collapsed two months later. Mysten said the failure did not threaten its plans, but the episode is part of why critics describe SUI’s distribution as investor-heavy.

After test networks through 2022 and early 2023, mainnet and the SUI token went live on May 3, 2023. The first year was rocky for the token, which spent long stretches below its listing price as unlocks hit the market. Development kept pace. In 2024 Sui moved to a new consensus engine, Mysticeti, aimed at lower latency. Ecosystem apps grew, including the Cetus and DeepBook exchanges and lending markets, and in 2025 Mysten launched Walrus, a decentralized storage network that uses Sui for coordination.

Two incidents tested the network. On November 21, 2024, Sui stopped producing blocks for roughly two to two and a half hours because of a bug in transaction scheduling logic, until validators upgraded. Then on May 22, 2025, an attacker exploited a math flaw in Cetus, Sui’s largest DEX, and drained around $220 million. Most validators chose to ignore transactions from the attacker’s addresses, freezing about $162 million on Sui. Sui’s on-chain governance then voted to move those funds back to a recovery process. Supporters saw a fast, transparent response that protected users. Critics argued that a validator set able to freeze funds on request is not credibly neutral. Both positions are worth understanding before you hold SUI.

Institutional access widened in February 2026, when US-listed spot SUI ETFs launched, including Canary Capital’s staking SUI fund (SUIS) and Grayscale’s conversion of its SUI trust (GSUI), with 21Shares following later that month. Mysten has also said Sui will add native private transactions during 2026.

How Sui works, in plain English

Objects instead of accounts

On Ethereum, a token balance is an entry in a contract’s ledger, so every transfer of that token touches the same shared state, and transactions are processed one after another. On Sui, a coin, an NFT or a game item is an object with an ID and an owner. If you send your coin to a friend and someone else trades an unrelated NFT, the two transactions don’t conflict, and validators can execute them simultaneously.

Two transaction paths

• Owned objects (for example, a simple payment from your wallet) only need validators to sign off that you own the object and haven’t spent it twice. This fast path skips full ordering consensus.
• Shared objects (for example, a DEX pool many people trade against) need ordering, which Sui’s consensus protocol, Mysticeti, provides.

This split is how Sui achieves low latency for everyday actions while still supporting complex DeFi. In practice, throughput depends on how much activity touches the same popular shared objects.

Sui Move and user-friendly features

Move treats digital assets as resources that cannot be copied or accidentally destroyed, which rules out some classes of bugs common in Solidity. It does not rule out all bugs. The Cetus exploit came from a flawed math check in application code. Read our explainer on smart contracts for the basics. Sui also builds onboarding features into the protocol: zkLogin lets users derive a wallet from an existing Google or Apple login using zero-knowledge proofs, and sponsored transactions let apps pay gas for users.

Is Sui a layer 1 or a layer 2?

Sui is a layer 1. It does not post its data to, or inherit security from, Ethereum or any other chain. Its own staked validators secure it. That makes it a direct competitor to chains like Solana rather than to Ethereum rollups. Our layer 2 guide explains the difference.

SUI tokenomics and supply

SUI has a fixed maximum supply of 10 billion tokens, all minted at genesis. Mysten’s published allocation is:

A large share of supply was locked at launch and unlocks over several years, with monthly releases that can add selling pressure. Sui publishes a token schedule page. Use it, or a reputable unlock tracker such as DefiLlama or Tokenomist, to see the current circulating supply and upcoming unlocks rather than relying on figures in older articles. As of October 2026, those trackers showed roughly 4.1 billion SUI circulating, about 41% of the cap, with releases continuing to early contributors, the Mysten Labs treasury and the community reserve.

SUI has three main uses: paying gas, staking to secure the network, and voting. Gas fees have two parts. One covers computation. The other is a storage fee that goes into a storage fund, which pays future validators for keeping data on chain. When you delete stored data, you get most of that storage fee back as a rebate.

How to buy SUI

SUI is listed on most major centralized exchanges. After buying, you can leave it on the exchange, or withdraw it to a Sui wallet such as Slush (Mysten’s wallet), Suiet, or a multi-chain wallet with Sui support. Withdraw on the Sui network specifically, and send a small test amount first. In the US, the spot SUI ETFs are another way to get price exposure through a brokerage account, though you don’t hold the token yourself and the funds charge management fees.

For exchange options, Slush wallet setup and SUI ETFs, follow our step-by-step guide on how to buy SUI.

If your funds already sit on another chain, our guide on how to bridge assets to Sui compares the Sui Bridge, Wormhole and USDC routes.

Staking SUI

Sui uses delegated proof of stake. You choose a validator and delegate SUI to it from a wallet. Sui runs in epochs of roughly 24 hours, so stake becomes active and starts earning from the next epoch. Withdrawals are processed at epoch boundaries rather than through a multi-week unbonding period. Validators charge a commission, and Sui uses a “tallying rule” under which validators reported for poor performance can lose rewards, rather than slashing delegators’ principal in the way many chains do. Rewards vary with total stake and network fees. Our step-by-step guide to staking SUI covers wallet choice and validator selection.

Sui vs Aptos: same roots, different designs

Because both chains came out of Diem and both use Move, they are often compared. The main differences:

• Data model: Sui is object-centric. Aptos keeps an account-based model closer to Diem’s original design.
• Execution: Sui’s parallelism comes from knowing up front which objects a transaction touches. Aptos uses Block-STM, which executes optimistically in parallel and re-runs conflicting transactions.
• Language: both use Move, but Sui Move and Aptos Move have diverged, so code is not directly portable.

Neither design has clearly won. For a fuller breakdown, see our Aptos vs Sui comparison.

Risks and is SUI a good investment?

Sui has a strong technical team, distinctive architecture, a growing DeFi and consumer-app ecosystem, and now ETF access in the US. Those are genuine strengths. The risks are just as concrete:

• Unlocks and concentration: a large share of supply belongs to insiders, investors and Mysten-controlled reserves, and it continues to unlock.
• Decentralization questions: the Cetus freeze showed validators can coordinate to censor addresses. Some users and institutions see that as a feature, others as a red flag.
• Reliability: one multi-hour halt in November 2024 is a short record, but it is still a record.
• Competition: Solana (see what is Solana), Aptos and Ethereum’s layer 2s all compete for the same developers and users.
• App-level risk: Move’s safety features did not prevent a $220 million DeFi exploit. Protocols on Sui carry their own smart contract risk.

If Sui keeps attracting consumer apps and DeFi activity faster than new supply unlocks, demand for gas and staking could absorb dilution. If activity stalls, unlocks become the dominant force. Anyone holding SUI should size it as a single-network bet, not a diversified position.

Price outlook: SUI scenarios

Sui was trading near $0.9072 on 26 October 2026, a market cap of roughly $3.7 billion. For bear, base and bull ranges through 2026, 2027 and 2030, with the supply maths and assumptions behind each, see our Sui price prediction.

FAQ

Is Sui a layer 1 blockchain?

Yes. Sui is an independent layer 1 with its own validator set, consensus protocol (Mysticeti) and native token. It does not settle to Ethereum or rely on another chain for security, which is what separates it from layer 2 networks like Arbitrum or Base. SUI tokens are staked with Sui validators to secure the network directly.

Who created Sui?

Sui was created by Mysten Labs, founded in 2021 by Evan Cheng, Sam Blackshear, Adeniyi Abiodun, George Danezis and Kostas Chalkias, all of whom worked on Meta’s Diem blockchain project. Blackshear also created the Move language. The Sui Foundation supports ecosystem growth, while Mysten Labs remains the core developer.

Is Sui better than Aptos?

Neither is objectively better. Both use Move and come from Diem. Sui’s object model lets simple transfers skip full consensus and makes parallelism explicit. Aptos uses an account model with optimistic parallel execution. Compare current activity, developer adoption, fees and token unlock schedules before forming a view, since those change much faster than the underlying technology.

What happened with Sui and the Cetus hack?

In May 2025 an attacker exploited a math bug in Cetus, Sui’s largest DEX, and took around $220 million. Sui validators coordinated to ignore transactions from the attacker’s addresses, freezing about $162 million that remained on Sui, and governance later approved moving those funds toward recovery. The response limited losses but raised questions about censorship and decentralization.

Crypto is volatile and risky; this is education, not financial advice. Do your own research.