SUI Blockchain is a decentralized platform that allows developers to build decentralized applications (dApps) with a focus on creating a trusted ecosystem for the community. One of the critical aspects of SUI's infrastructure is its blockchain explorer and wallet, which play a significant role in helping users and developers navigate the network's ecosystem. In this article, we'll explore where users can find the SUI explorer and wallet, the key features and designs that the team had in mind when building them, and the challenges they faced during the development process.

The SUI Explorer and Wallet can be accessed on sui.io. Users can also find them across all current resource pages and medium blog posts. The Explorer source is available on Explorer.devnet.sui.io, while the wallet is live as a Chrome extension.

In the beginning, the SUI team realized that they needed a block explorer to allow users to debug, track assets, and browse on-chain data. It was crucial to get an MVP out as soon as possible so that users could interact with the Devnet, see live on-chain data, provide feedback, and request new features that could be executed in parallel.

The SUI Explorer is designed to be a powerful tool that provides users with access to all the different data on the blockchain, serving as the source of truth. The key features that the team had in mind when building the explorer were to:

• Ship features as hyper-functional.

• Create a heightened experience for users and developers.

• Bring on the next billion users to web3.

• Present useful, helpful, and accurate data without being daunting to newcomers.

The SUI Wallet is a Chrome extension and a full self-custody wallet. Users can create a wallet, manage assets, NFTs, and coins, send and receive assets, and authenticate and interact with dApps on SUI. The SUI team's goal is to ship very useful features, implement unique functionalities on SUI, promote high usability, functionality, and quality, and offer a fast and smooth onboarding process for all users.

The SUI Wallet is fully self-custody, giving users control and building with security best practices in mind. The team is also exploring different avenues that can bring additional security and user experience options to the wallet.

The SUI Wallet is designed to be a gateway that connects users to other dots in the SUI ecosystem. Any dApp should be able to connect to the wallet, and it will be user-friendly and demonstrate a lot of cool features that only SUI can provide. The team is exploring various partnerships, including working with hardware wallets such as Ledger, to add extra security.

Building an explorer has allowed the SUI team to test their APIs and ensure that they have data that can meet users' needs. The team's goal is to build an explorer for people to explore the blockchain and to allow others to build their own explorers and wallets in the space. The explorer also includes unique features that can be built out due to the unique aspects of SUI's blockchain, such as the Move bytecode display, which allows users to see the actual bytecode deployed as part of a package.

Building a reliable, secure, and user-friendly wallet and explorer can be challenging, especially when working with blockchain technology. Bauer, Alonso, Ge, and Jordan share some of the challenges they faced during the development of the Sui wallet and explorer.

One of the challenges, according to Bauer, is maintaining a balance between innovation and familiarity when creating the look and feel and defining different actions you can take in the explorer and the wallet. He explains that while it is essential to innovate and offer something new, it is equally important to maintain some familiarity so that users do not feel overwhelmed or confused when using the wallet or explorer.

For the explorer, Jordan explains that one of the challenges was ensuring that it offers tons of useful and actionable information without being overwhelming. He adds that while the explorer is a great testing ground for looking at their APIs and making sure that they have data that can meet their user's needs, they had to ensure that they do not compromise the user experience by providing too much information.

Ge points out that one of the challenges with blockchain technology is making data accessible and easy to understand for retail users. He believes that one way to tackle this challenge is by doing all kinds of data processing to visualize the data in a prettier way so that people can understand it better. To support dev needs, he adds that they also have some ongoing work to provide indexing libraries and tools so that people can build their databases, not only for their explorer but also for their various DApps.

Despite the challenges they faced, the team behind the Sui wallet and explorer is still moving forward with their plans to provide the best user experience for their users. Bauer explains that they have a roadmap and vision that guides them, and they are also actively exploring some of the really delightful differentiated experiences that probably haven't been seen before for both the wallet and explorer side. He adds that a lot of this is made possible because of Sui Move, and they are always looking for ways to push the explorer beyond what currently people have in their minds, turning it into almost like an application experience that is living and breathing and constantly changing.

Jordan adds that Sui's native concept of ownership and a rich object model helps them solve some of the UX problems at a low level. He explains that it kind of solves a lot of the problems that traditional blockchain explorers run into, just by having a more natural model for how this data is available and presentable directly from the chain itself.

Ge adds that they are excited about making the wallet a gateway that connects a lot of other dots in the Sui ecosystem. Any DApp should be able to connect to the wallet, and the Sui wallet will be user-friendly and demonstrate a lot of cool features that only Sui can provide. They are also exploring different partnerships, such as working with hardware wallets like Ledger, to add extra security.