Core Idea: The Sui public chain is not an iteration on the Ethereum framework but a redesign based on "first principles," focusing intently on asset representation, transaction execution, security mechanisms, and scalability.

* Assets Modeled as Objects: Unlike Ethereum's account balance model, Sui directly models on-chain assets (like tickets, game items) as "objects" with unique IDs and lifecycles, better reflecting the dynamic nature of real-world assets. However, this raises compatibility challenges with established ERC standard ecosystems.

* Parallel Transaction Processing: By allowing transactions involving unrelated objects to execute in parallel, Sui avoids the global queuing bottleneck of traditional blockchains, boosting concurrency performance. However, hotspot objects (e.g., popular NFT contracts) can still become congestion points.

* Built-in Secure Language Move: The Move language enforces resource safety rules (e.g., prevention of copying, arbitrary destruction) at the programming level, reducing smart contract vulnerability risks. The trade-off is that developers need to adapt to a new paradigm, and the ecosystem tooling is still maturing.

* Horizontal Scalability: Processing independent objects in a distributed manner theoretically enables horizontal scaling akin to a subway network. However, the stability of large-scale scheduling and the node economic model still require validation.

* Ecosystem Status: Projects in DeFi (e.g., DeepBook, Cetus), gaming, and user onboarding (e.g., zkLogin, sponsored transactions) have been deployed. Nonetheless, user scale, capital depth, and a killer app are still lacking, with some projects relying on foundation subsidies.

* User Experience Optimizations: The object model makes assets intuitive, parallel execution increases speed, and PTBs simplify complex operations. Attempts to lower the entry barrier (e.g., social logins) are present, but Sui must prove it can offer unique value irreplaceable by Web2, like true asset ownership and cross-application composability.

---

Summary

Author: Liu Honglin

The blockchain world has evolved rapidly in recent years, becoming increasingly complex. Bitcoin started it all, turning "peer-to-peer electronic cash" from a paper into reality. Ethereum brought "smart contracts" to the forefront, spawning countless applications. But the narrative for most new public chains since then falls into two categories: either claiming compatibility with Ethereum to "port over" its existing ecosystem and developers, or focusing on performance by adding hardware or altering architecture to solve Ethereum's congestion issues.

Both paths have seen success but also harbor hidden worries. Ethereum's compatibility gives it the most vibrant ecosystem, yet it still suffers from congestion and high fees. Performance-focused chains might achieve impressive TPS by burning money on hardware, but at the cost of high operating expenses and sacrifices in decentralization; others have complex, layered architectures where maintenance difficulty and risks gradually become apparent. From a user's perspective, the experience often boils down to a few words: slow, expensive, and counter-intuitive.

Against this backdrop, Sui emerged. It doesn't claim to be a "faster Ethereum" or a "cheaper Solana." Instead, it puts forward a rather confident slogan: "An L1 public chain redesigned from first principles."

Initially, I didn't pay much attention—the blockchain world is never short of new concepts. But gradually, I noticed many developer friends, project investors, and even people previously indifferent to public chains starting to talk about Sui. They said this chain is truly different from Ethereum and Solana.

Out of curiosity, I spent some time researching: Where exactly does its claimed "first principles" approach manifest? Compared to its predecessors, what are its highlights and potential pitfalls? The following content represents my梳理 and thoughts as a blockchain enthusiast. A necessary disclaimer: I lack a technical background, so some expressions might not be perfectly rigorous or accurate—please bear with me.

What Exactly is an Asset?

At its core, a blockchain records assets. So the question arises: How should assets be represented on-chain? Bitcoin and Ethereum's answer is straightforward—accounts and balances. Who has how much money is like a line entry in a ledger. This method is simple but quite different from real-world assets. A concert ticket is a physical item, invalid after one use; a game item has levels and durability; a bank's mortgage contract has specific terms and interest rates. If all these are compressed into "an increase in an account balance," additional logic is needed to explain them. Hence, Ethereum continuously introduced standards like ERC-20, ERC-721, ERC-1155, acting like patches to compensate for the limitations of the balance model.

Sui takes a different path. It doesn't延续 this logic but instead models assets directly as "objects." Each object has a unique ID, ownership, and properties, and can change over time and with use. A ticket used once automatically shows as "used"; a sword can be upgraded or might break. In other words, on-chain assets are no longer cold numbers but "living things" with lifecycles. This makes developing complex assets more natural, without needing convoluted logic to explain them.

Of course, this design isn't without cost. Developers accustomed to Solidity must重新适应 managing the "lifecycle" of objects. The toolchain must keep up; otherwise, if indexers, wallets, and marketplaces aren't tailored for the object model, developers might fall back to a "balance mindset." A more practical issue is that the ERC series has become the de facto global standard. When interoperating with ecosystems like Ethereum and Solana, Sui's object logic requires additional mapping and conversion, which might not be smooth.

So, the idea of treating assets as objects is elegant and indeed closer to the form of real-world assets. But whether it can truly succeed depends on whether the entire ecosystem can build supporting infrastructure, achieving standardization, tooling support, and cross-chain interoperability. Otherwise, even the most elegant concept might get stuck in the gap between "ideal and compatibility."

Why Must Transactions Queue?

A chronic issue in the blockchain world is that all transactions must be executed sequentially, one by one. Ethereum is designed this way: transactions in each block are processed in order. It's like a city with only one toll booth; whether buying a coffee or signing a property contract, everyone waits in the same line. If someone is slow, those behind can only wait. The efficiency bottleneck is obvious.

Solana's approach is to upgrade this toll booth into a super-high-speed one, streamlining processing and leveraging high-performance hardware to maximize throughput on a single lane. The result is indeed much faster than Ethereum, but it's still essentially a "single lane," just faster. The more hardware is堆ed, the higher the cost, the stricter the requirements for participating nodes, and the greater the compromise on decentralization.

Sui changes the思路. Since it models assets as independent objects, why should operations on two unrelated objects wait for each other? So it changes the execution logic to parallel: transactions involving different objects can run simultaneously; only operations modifying the same object need to queue. It's like converting a single-lane highway into multiple lanes. Most vehicles go their own way, only queuing when competing for the same exit ramp. Additionally, it designs Programmable Transaction Blocks (PTBs), allowing complex multi-step operations to be bundled into a single transaction for one-time execution, avoiding mid-way failures or repeated confirmations.

A life-like analogy: imagine checking out at a supermarket. The traditional Ethereum model is the entire store having only one checkout counter; whether buying a bottle of water or a full cart, you wait slowly in the same line. Solana's approach is to equip this counter with the fastest scanner and most skilled cashier, but the line is still single. Sui's approach is more like opening ten checkout counters; most customers can check out分散ly, significantly improving efficiency.

This design greatly enhances potential performance, making "high concurrency" possible. But it's not a free lunch. First, the system needs to identify dependencies between transactions before execution, which itself incurs computational overhead. It's like a traffic police officer first judging which cars can go simultaneously and which might collide before directing traffic. If there are too many transactions, just doing this scheduling consumes resources. Second, the hotspot problem remains. Once a highly contested shared object appears, like a popular order book or NFT contract, all related transactions must still queue obediently; this bottleneck doesn't disappear.

For developers, parallel execution also means new challenges. In a sequential world, logic is relatively straightforward, and testing paths are controllable. In a parallel environment, concurrent read/writes and state conflicts must be considered. If not designed well, hard-to-reproduce bugs might appear under extreme conditions. It's like in software development, moving from single-threaded to multi-threaded: performance gains are possible, but debugging and verification complexity often increases exponentially.

So, parallel execution indeed opens a new path, freeing blockchains from the single-threaded ceiling. But before running towards large-scale applications, it still must face practical tests like scheduling overhead, hotspot bottlenecks, and increased developer mental complexity.

Should Security Rely on Language or Habit?

Security issues in public chains often stem not from highly sophisticated attackers but from the excessive freedom granted by the language itself. Solidity is a classic example. It's flexible enough to write all sorts of imaginative logic, but simultaneously, DAO hacks, reentrancy attacks, integer overflows, and permission management vulnerabilities keep happening. One could argue this is because developers aren't careful enough, but from another angle: if a system's security relies on "people being constantly highly cautious," it suggests the system's rules themselves aren't robust enough.

Here, Sui chooses another path—it builds smart contracts based on the Move language. Move originated from Facebook's Libra project, with the core concept that "a resource is a resource." Resources are treated as first-class citizens at the language level, cannot be copied by default, cannot be arbitrarily destroyed, and must be transferred under explicit ownership. Wanting to store it in global storage requires specific permissions. These aren't conventions for developers to "conscientiously follow" but hard constraints baked into the language rules. In other words, security shifts from "relying on habit" to "relying on system."

A closer life analogy: Solidity is like a mountain road without guardrails; you can drive freely, but if you skid, it's a precipice. Move is like a highway, full of guardrails, speed limits, and defined exits; even if you're inexperienced, the probability of an accident is greatly reduced. The problem is, building and maintaining highways is costly, and if the rules differ between regions, drivers crossing zones will still find it troublesome.

This design确实 reduces many common risks. Ethereum developers often need to carefully avoid errors like "duplicate transfers" or "generating tokens out of thin air," while in Move, these vulnerabilities are blocked at the compilation stage. For users, it means assets are less likely to vanish into thin air due to contract bugs.

But the other side of guardrails is门槛. Move's programming paradigm is completely different from what most engineers are used to. Many Solidity veterans find their hands tied when first writing Move: wanting to casually copy a value, the compiler disallows it; wanting to destroy an object requires meeting specific conditions. Initially, the speed is noticeably slower. More troublesome is that Move's ecosystem isn't yet mature. Solidity has accumulated countless libraries, frameworks, and auditing experiences, while Move's toolchain, auditing firms, and best practices are still under construction.

Another easily overlooked practical issue: Move isn't exactly the same on Aptos and Sui. This means developers can't achieve "learn once, use everywhere." This divergence increases learning costs in the short term and risks fragmenting the Move ecosystem into smaller circles, weakening network effects.

So, from a security perspective, Sui's choice is rational: rather than pinning hopes on developer caution and discipline, it's better to write the rules directly into the language itself. But from an ecosystem perspective, this road isn't easy. Developers need time to adapt, tools and auditing systems need to be completed, and fragmentation between platforms needs to be avoided. If these issues aren't resolved well, even the best guardrails might become a "special lane only a few can drive on."

What Does Scalability Rely On?

Scalability is an issue almost every public chain must address. Ethereum chose the "build Layer 2" route: the main chain handles security and settlement, while L2s carry most transactions. This is like constantly building overpasses in a congested city; it确实分流s, but switching between layers is complex, and cross-chain bridges become high-risk areas. Solana takes another extreme, pushing single-machine performance to the limit, like building a super-highway where all cars race on this single lane. The result is fast speed, but the cost is high, fewer people can afford to "drive," and decentralization is compromised.

Sui proposes a third way. Since it abstracts on-chain assets into independent objects, it can split objects and have different nodes process them separately. Most unrelated objects execute in parallel; only when encountering particularly hot shared objects is centralized coordination needed. This is more like building a subway network: different lines run simultaneously, independent of each other, congestion only occurring at a few transfer hubs. Theoretically, this design means the system can scale horizontally: the more users, the more lines, the stronger the overall capacity.

However, there's a distance between the blueprint on paper and reality. Sui's mainnet hasn't yet undergone extreme tests with tens of millions of users online simultaneously. The larger a distributed system, the more challenging scheduling and consistency become, just like the pressure on a dispatch center increases exponentially with more subway lines. Adding to that, the node economic model is still a question mark: who is willing to operate nodes long-term and stably? If rewards are too low, no one maintains them; if the design is unreasonable, a rush towards hot objects might occur, neglecting colder areas. Over time, "bad money might drive out good."

So, in terms of approach, Sui's scalability solution is more elastic than "overpasses" or a "single super-highway." But to truly build a well-connected, stable subway network, it requires the combined effort of technical validation, economic incentives, and ecosystem磨合.

Is the Ecosystem Truly Landing?

No matter how beautiful the理念, without practical applications, it's just a castle in the air. After its mainnet launch, Sui确实 attracted a batch of ecosystem projects, from finance to gaming, from onboarding to e-commerce, piecing together a雏形. But turning a雏形 into a prosperous ecosystem is a long road.

In finance, DeepBook is seen as infrastructure. It attempts to run a high-performance order book matching system on-chain, leveraging parallel execution and low latency to make matching and clearing as smooth as in centralized exchanges. This attempt is important because order books are the "heart" of financial markets; if successful, it could support high-frequency trading and complex strategies. The problem is that order books are naturally "shared objects," where the advantage of parallel execution is diminished, hotspots still exist, and performance can easily hit bottlenecks. More realistically, whether on-chain matching can truly attract market makers and institutions is a challenge that needs validation with capital and depth.

Cetus positions itself as a decentralized exchange and liquidity protocol. It provides aggregated routing to help users find better prices across different pools, sounding like the "Didi" (ride-hailing app) in DeFi, able to "hail a ride" anywhere. But aggregation cannot create depth out of thin air; liquidity still relies on capital providers willing to enter. Currently, Cetus's trading volume is only a fraction of Uniswap's on Ethereum; the network effect is far from formed.

Scallop Lend represents the lending direction, emphasizing institutional-grade quality and composability, hoping to attract more professional participants. Lending is the lifeblood of DeFi, but the issue is that risk management still relies on external capital and oracles; Sui's architectural advantages cannot replace these "invisible hands."

At the user onboarding layer, Sui introduces two interesting tools: zkLogin and sponsored transactions. The former allows users to log into dApps with familiar accounts, using zero-knowledge proofs for security, effectively hiding the complex on-chain private key experience in the background. The latter allows new users to interact directly without first buying tokens. These designs lower the barrier but bring new questions: Who will pay for sponsored transactions long-term? Without a healthy business model, this experience might be unsustainable, eventually reverting to the old path of "needing to buy tokens first."

In the NFT and e-commerce space, Sui introduced the Kiosk standard, attempting to unify the on-chain process of "listing-custody-settlement-transfer." The idea is good: reduce friction between marketplaces, increase asset liquidity. But currently, the overall trading volume of Sui's NFT market is limited, with most collections lacking secondary market activity. No matter how perfect the standard, without user and capital flow, it's an "isolated standard."

Gaming is another key direction. Sui has attracted well-known IPs like "Samurai Shodown R" and original blockchain games. The object model确实 suits expressing complex in-game items well—a sword that can be upgraded, a pet that can evolve—these are natural "object state changes" in Sui's contracts. Parallel execution also alleviates lag during multi-user interactions. But whether a game can last long-term ultimately depends on players willing to stay, not just claim airdrops. So far, no project on Sui has exploded globally like Axie Infinity.

These efforts prevent Sui from being an empty shell, but the困境 is equally apparent: user scale and transaction volume are still limited compared to Ethereum and Solana. Many projects still rely on foundation subsidies, lacking self-sustaining business models. The so-called "daily applications" haven't emerged; scenarios where average users need the chain are still scarce. Even in DeFi, depth and risk management still depend on external capital; the chain's architectural advantages cannot replace market cold starts. In other words, parallel execution can solve performance issues but doesn't automatically generate users and capital.

Sui's ecosystem is like a new shopping mall: the decoration is beautiful, the design理念 advanced, the subway entrance and parking lot are built, but the number of入驻 merchants is insufficient, and customer flow hasn't arrived. The foundation can temporarily subsidize rents and attract a few big brands to open, but for the mall to truly become lively, it relies on merchants making money and customers wanting to come. This is Sui's real test in the coming years.

How Can Blockchain Enter Everyday Life?

Most people's first contact with Web3 often stumbles at the most basic门槛: downloading a wallet, copying a string of incomprehensible seed phrases, then figuring out how to buy native tokens to start operating. Even after gritting one's teeth through these steps, patience is often lost due to high Gas fees, failed transactions, or long waits. The Web3 entry point has long carried a "counter-intuitive" barrier.

Sui's design, to some extent, addresses these pain points. The object model makes on-chain assets more like physical objects, easier to understand. For example, a concert ticket isn't "an increase in account balance" but a ticket with an ID that automatically shows "used" after one use; a sword in a game isn't just a number but an object that can be upgraded, damaged, or traded. This lets users perceive on-chain assets as "things" rather than "a line in a ledger" during their first contact.

Parallel execution makes operations faster. On traditional chains, transferring money and deploying a contract queue in the same line, like buying coffee and transferring property titles waiting at the same window. Sui's parallel logic is closer to reality: most transactions on different objects don't interfere, users get feedback quickly after initiating an action. For users accustomed to instant payments, this "non-lagging" feeling is crucial.

Add PTBs (Programmable Transaction Blocks), complex multi-step operations can be completed in one go, reducing the hassle of mid-way failures or repeated confirmations. Newcomers most fear clicking around only to get an error message without understanding why; PTBs hide complexity in the backend, making the user experience more like "one confirmation gets it done."

Sui also attempts to address the cold-start problem. With zkLogin, users can even log in directly with Google or Apple accounts, without first understanding the entire unfamiliar system of public/private keys and seed phrases. Sponsored transactions allow newcomers to complete their first on-chain operation without first buying tokens. This significantly lowers the barrier—at least people aren't deterred by the initial繁琐.

However, just making the experience "less bad" isn't enough. To truly migrate people on-chain, applications must emerge that Web2 cannot provide. Alipay and WeChat have polished payment experiences to be almost frictionless. To compete with such opponents, Sui must offer "must-use" reasons. For example: assets that users truly own and cannot be arbitrarily frozen; experiences of free cross-application composability—concert tickets can be bought not only through official channels but also traded on secondary markets, even bundled into collections and displayed alongside virtual items from games; game items no longer locked in a specific manufacturer's server but transferable between different games. Such experiences are what Web2 cannot do and what Sui needs to produce as killer use cases.

From a macro perspective, Sui indeed offers a set of answers different from its predecessors: it turns assets from balances into objects, allows parallel transactions, bakes security into language rules, and uses distributed scaling instead of hardware stacking. In its ecosystem, it attempts to land these理念逐步 through DeFi projects like DeepBook, Cetus, Scallop, onboarding designs like zkLogin and sponsored transactions, standardization attempts like Kiosk, and explorations in链游.

But the challenges it faces cannot be ignored. The object model is割裂 from the ERC world, requiring extra cost for interoperability; parallel execution still faces bottlenecks with hotspot objects; Move's learning curve and ecosystem size limit developer migration speed; distributed scaling remains unvalidated at large scale; the application ecosystem still relies on subsidies, and truly daily scenarios haven't emerged.

Therefore, if Sui represents an exploration of "first principles," its greatest value lies in offering a different path: not patching up the Ethereum framework but重新问了 the most basic questions and attempting to provide new answers. How far this set of answers can go still requires the combined test of time, ecosystem, policy, and market.

Core Idea: The Sui public chain is not an iteration on the Ethereum framework but a redesign based on "first principles," focusing intently on asset representation, transaction execution, security mechanisms, and scalability.

* Assets Modeled as Objects: Unlike Ethereum's account balance model, Sui directly models on-chain assets (like tickets, game items) as "objects" with unique IDs and lifecycles, better reflecting the dynamic nature of real-world assets. However, this raises compatibility challenges with established ERC standard ecosystems.

* Parallel Transaction Processing: By allowing transactions involving unrelated objects to execute in parallel, Sui avoids the global queuing bottleneck of traditional blockchains, boosting concurrency performance. However, hotspot objects (e.g., popular NFT contracts) can still become congestion points.

* Built-in Secure Language Move: The Move language enforces resource safety rules (e.g., prevention of copying, arbitrary destruction) at the programming level, reducing smart contract vulnerability risks. The trade-off is that developers need to adapt to a new paradigm, and the ecosystem tooling is still maturing.

* Horizontal Scalability: Processing independent objects in a distributed manner theoretically enables horizontal scaling akin to a subway network. However, the stability of large-scale scheduling and the node economic model still require validation.

* Ecosystem Status: Projects in DeFi (e.g., DeepBook, Cetus), gaming, and user onboarding (e.g., zkLogin, sponsored transactions) have been deployed. Nonetheless, user scale, capital depth, and a killer app are still lacking, with some projects relying on foundation subsidies.

* User Experience Optimizations: The object model makes assets intuitive, parallel execution increases speed, and PTBs simplify complex operations. Attempts to lower the entry barrier (e.g., social logins) are present, but Sui must prove it can offer unique value irreplaceable by Web2, like true asset ownership and cross-application composability.

---

Summary

Author: Liu Honglin

The blockchain world has evolved rapidly in recent years, becoming increasingly complex. Bitcoin started it all, turning "peer-to-peer electronic cash" from a paper into reality. Ethereum brought "smart contracts" to the forefront, spawning countless applications. But the narrative for most new public chains since then falls into two categories: either claiming compatibility with Ethereum to "port over" its existing ecosystem and developers, or focusing on performance by adding hardware or altering architecture to solve Ethereum's congestion issues.

Both paths have seen success but also harbor hidden worries. Ethereum's compatibility gives it the most vibrant ecosystem, yet it still suffers from congestion and high fees. Performance-focused chains might achieve impressive TPS by burning money on hardware, but at the cost of high operating expenses and sacrifices in decentralization; others have complex, layered architectures where maintenance difficulty and risks gradually become apparent. From a user's perspective, the experience often boils down to a few words: slow, expensive, and counter-intuitive.

Against this backdrop, Sui emerged. It doesn't claim to be a "faster Ethereum" or a "cheaper Solana." Instead, it puts forward a rather confident slogan: "An L1 public chain redesigned from first principles."

Initially, I didn't pay much attention—the blockchain world is never short of new concepts. But gradually, I noticed many developer friends, project investors, and even people previously indifferent to public chains starting to talk about Sui. They said this chain is truly different from Ethereum and Solana.

Out of curiosity, I spent some time researching: Where exactly does its claimed "first principles" approach manifest? Compared to its predecessors, what are its highlights and potential pitfalls? The following content represents my梳理 and thoughts as a blockchain enthusiast. A necessary disclaimer: I lack a technical background, so some expressions might not be perfectly rigorous or accurate—please bear with me.

What Exactly is an Asset?

At its core, a blockchain records assets. So the question arises: How should assets be represented on-chain? Bitcoin and Ethereum's answer is straightforward—accounts and balances. Who has how much money is like a line entry in a ledger. This method is simple but quite different from real-world assets. A concert ticket is a physical item, invalid after one use; a game item has levels and durability; a bank's mortgage contract has specific terms and interest rates. If all these are compressed into "an increase in an account balance," additional logic is needed to explain them. Hence, Ethereum continuously introduced standards like ERC-20, ERC-721, ERC-1155, acting like patches to compensate for the limitations of the balance model.

Sui takes a different path. It doesn't延续 this logic but instead models assets directly as "objects." Each object has a unique ID, ownership, and properties, and can change over time and with use. A ticket used once automatically shows as "used"; a sword can be upgraded or might break. In other words, on-chain assets are no longer cold numbers but "living things" with lifecycles. This makes developing complex assets more natural, without needing convoluted logic to explain them.

Of course, this design isn't without cost. Developers accustomed to Solidity must重新适应 managing the "lifecycle" of objects. The toolchain must keep up; otherwise, if indexers, wallets, and marketplaces aren't tailored for the object model, developers might fall back to a "balance mindset." A more practical issue is that the ERC series has become the de facto global standard. When interoperating with ecosystems like Ethereum and Solana, Sui's object logic requires additional mapping and conversion, which might not be smooth.

So, the idea of treating assets as objects is elegant and indeed closer to the form of real-world assets. But whether it can truly succeed depends on whether the entire ecosystem can build supporting infrastructure, achieving standardization, tooling support, and cross-chain interoperability. Otherwise, even the most elegant concept might get stuck in the gap between "ideal and compatibility."

Why Must Transactions Queue?

A chronic issue in the blockchain world is that all transactions must be executed sequentially, one by one. Ethereum is designed this way: transactions in each block are processed in order. It's like a city with only one toll booth; whether buying a coffee or signing a property contract, everyone waits in the same line. If someone is slow, those behind can only wait. The efficiency bottleneck is obvious.

Solana's approach is to upgrade this toll booth into a super-high-speed one, streamlining processing and leveraging high-performance hardware to maximize throughput on a single lane. The result is indeed much faster than Ethereum, but it's still essentially a "single lane," just faster. The more hardware is堆ed, the higher the cost, the stricter the requirements for participating nodes, and the greater the compromise on decentralization.

Sui changes the思路. Since it models assets as independent objects, why should operations on two unrelated objects wait for each other? So it changes the execution logic to parallel: transactions involving different objects can run simultaneously; only operations modifying the same object need to queue. It's like converting a single-lane highway into multiple lanes. Most vehicles go their own way, only queuing when competing for the same exit ramp. Additionally, it designs Programmable Transaction Blocks (PTBs), allowing complex multi-step operations to be bundled into a single transaction for one-time execution, avoiding mid-way failures or repeated confirmations.

A life-like analogy: imagine checking out at a supermarket. The traditional Ethereum model is the entire store having only one checkout counter; whether buying a bottle of water or a full cart, you wait slowly in the same line. Solana's approach is to equip this counter with the fastest scanner and most skilled cashier, but the line is still single. Sui's approach is more like opening ten checkout counters; most customers can check out分散ly, significantly improving efficiency.

This design greatly enhances potential performance, making "high concurrency" possible. But it's not a free lunch. First, the system needs to identify dependencies between transactions before execution, which itself incurs computational overhead. It's like a traffic police officer first judging which cars can go simultaneously and which might collide before directing traffic. If there are too many transactions, just doing this scheduling consumes resources. Second, the hotspot problem remains. Once a highly contested shared object appears, like a popular order book or NFT contract, all related transactions must still queue obediently; this bottleneck doesn't disappear.

For developers, parallel execution also means new challenges. In a sequential world, logic is relatively straightforward, and testing paths are controllable. In a parallel environment, concurrent read/writes and state conflicts must be considered. If not designed well, hard-to-reproduce bugs might appear under extreme conditions. It's like in software development, moving from single-threaded to multi-threaded: performance gains are possible, but debugging and verification complexity often increases exponentially.

So, parallel execution indeed opens a new path, freeing blockchains from the single-threaded ceiling. But before running towards large-scale applications, it still must face practical tests like scheduling overhead, hotspot bottlenecks, and increased developer mental complexity.

Should Security Rely on Language or Habit?

Security issues in public chains often stem not from highly sophisticated attackers but from the excessive freedom granted by the language itself. Solidity is a classic example. It's flexible enough to write all sorts of imaginative logic, but simultaneously, DAO hacks, reentrancy attacks, integer overflows, and permission management vulnerabilities keep happening. One could argue this is because developers aren't careful enough, but from another angle: if a system's security relies on "people being constantly highly cautious," it suggests the system's rules themselves aren't robust enough.

Here, Sui chooses another path—it builds smart contracts based on the Move language. Move originated from Facebook's Libra project, with the core concept that "a resource is a resource." Resources are treated as first-class citizens at the language level, cannot be copied by default, cannot be arbitrarily destroyed, and must be transferred under explicit ownership. Wanting to store it in global storage requires specific permissions. These aren't conventions for developers to "conscientiously follow" but hard constraints baked into the language rules. In other words, security shifts from "relying on habit" to "relying on system."

A closer life analogy: Solidity is like a mountain road without guardrails; you can drive freely, but if you skid, it's a precipice. Move is like a highway, full of guardrails, speed limits, and defined exits; even if you're inexperienced, the probability of an accident is greatly reduced. The problem is, building and maintaining highways is costly, and if the rules differ between regions, drivers crossing zones will still find it troublesome.

This design确实 reduces many common risks. Ethereum developers often need to carefully avoid errors like "duplicate transfers" or "generating tokens out of thin air," while in Move, these vulnerabilities are blocked at the compilation stage. For users, it means assets are less likely to vanish into thin air due to contract bugs.

But the other side of guardrails is门槛. Move's programming paradigm is completely different from what most engineers are used to. Many Solidity veterans find their hands tied when first writing Move: wanting to casually copy a value, the compiler disallows it; wanting to destroy an object requires meeting specific conditions. Initially, the speed is noticeably slower. More troublesome is that Move's ecosystem isn't yet mature. Solidity has accumulated countless libraries, frameworks, and auditing experiences, while Move's toolchain, auditing firms, and best practices are still under construction.

Another easily overlooked practical issue: Move isn't exactly the same on Aptos and Sui. This means developers can't achieve "learn once, use everywhere." This divergence increases learning costs in the short term and risks fragmenting the Move ecosystem into smaller circles, weakening network effects.

So, from a security perspective, Sui's choice is rational: rather than pinning hopes on developer caution and discipline, it's better to write the rules directly into the language itself. But from an ecosystem perspective, this road isn't easy. Developers need time to adapt, tools and auditing systems need to be completed, and fragmentation between platforms needs to be avoided. If these issues aren't resolved well, even the best guardrails might become a "special lane only a few can drive on."

What Does Scalability Rely On?

Scalability is an issue almost every public chain must address. Ethereum chose the "build Layer 2" route: the main chain handles security and settlement, while L2s carry most transactions. This is like constantly building overpasses in a congested city; it确实分流s, but switching between layers is complex, and cross-chain bridges become high-risk areas. Solana takes another extreme, pushing single-machine performance to the limit, like building a super-highway where all cars race on this single lane. The result is fast speed, but the cost is high, fewer people can afford to "drive," and decentralization is compromised.

Sui proposes a third way. Since it abstracts on-chain assets into independent objects, it can split objects and have different nodes process them separately. Most unrelated objects execute in parallel; only when encountering particularly hot shared objects is centralized coordination needed. This is more like building a subway network: different lines run simultaneously, independent of each other, congestion only occurring at a few transfer hubs. Theoretically, this design means the system can scale horizontally: the more users, the more lines, the stronger the overall capacity.

However, there's a distance between the blueprint on paper and reality. Sui's mainnet hasn't yet undergone extreme tests with tens of millions of users online simultaneously. The larger a distributed system, the more challenging scheduling and consistency become, just like the pressure on a dispatch center increases exponentially with more subway lines. Adding to that, the node economic model is still a question mark: who is willing to operate nodes long-term and stably? If rewards are too low, no one maintains them; if the design is unreasonable, a rush towards hot objects might occur, neglecting colder areas. Over time, "bad money might drive out good."

So, in terms of approach, Sui's scalability solution is more elastic than "overpasses" or a "single super-highway." But to truly build a well-connected, stable subway network, it requires the combined effort of technical validation, economic incentives, and ecosystem磨合.

Is the Ecosystem Truly Landing?

No matter how beautiful the理念, without practical applications, it's just a castle in the air. After its mainnet launch, Sui确实 attracted a batch of ecosystem projects, from finance to gaming, from onboarding to e-commerce, piecing together a雏形. But turning a雏形 into a prosperous ecosystem is a long road.

In finance, DeepBook is seen as infrastructure. It attempts to run a high-performance order book matching system on-chain, leveraging parallel execution and low latency to make matching and clearing as smooth as in centralized exchanges. This attempt is important because order books are the "heart" of financial markets; if successful, it could support high-frequency trading and complex strategies. The problem is that order books are naturally "shared objects," where the advantage of parallel execution is diminished, hotspots still exist, and performance can easily hit bottlenecks. More realistically, whether on-chain matching can truly attract market makers and institutions is a challenge that needs validation with capital and depth.

Cetus positions itself as a decentralized exchange and liquidity protocol. It provides aggregated routing to help users find better prices across different pools, sounding like the "Didi" (ride-hailing app) in DeFi, able to "hail a ride" anywhere. But aggregation cannot create depth out of thin air; liquidity still relies on capital providers willing to enter. Currently, Cetus's trading volume is only a fraction of Uniswap's on Ethereum; the network effect is far from formed.

Scallop Lend represents the lending direction, emphasizing institutional-grade quality and composability, hoping to attract more professional participants. Lending is the lifeblood of DeFi, but the issue is that risk management still relies on external capital and oracles; Sui's architectural advantages cannot replace these "invisible hands."

At the user onboarding layer, Sui introduces two interesting tools: zkLogin and sponsored transactions. The former allows users to log into dApps with familiar accounts, using zero-knowledge proofs for security, effectively hiding the complex on-chain private key experience in the background. The latter allows new users to interact directly without first buying tokens. These designs lower the barrier but bring new questions: Who will pay for sponsored transactions long-term? Without a healthy business model, this experience might be unsustainable, eventually reverting to the old path of "needing to buy tokens first."

In the NFT and e-commerce space, Sui introduced the Kiosk standard, attempting to unify the on-chain process of "listing-custody-settlement-transfer." The idea is good: reduce friction between marketplaces, increase asset liquidity. But currently, the overall trading volume of Sui's NFT market is limited, with most collections lacking secondary market activity. No matter how perfect the standard, without user and capital flow, it's an "isolated standard."

Gaming is another key direction. Sui has attracted well-known IPs like "Samurai Shodown R" and original blockchain games. The object model确实 suits expressing complex in-game items well—a sword that can be upgraded, a pet that can evolve—these are natural "object state changes" in Sui's contracts. Parallel execution also alleviates lag during multi-user interactions. But whether a game can last long-term ultimately depends on players willing to stay, not just claim airdrops. So far, no project on Sui has exploded globally like Axie Infinity.

These efforts prevent Sui from being an empty shell, but the困境 is equally apparent: user scale and transaction volume are still limited compared to Ethereum and Solana. Many projects still rely on foundation subsidies, lacking self-sustaining business models. The so-called "daily applications" haven't emerged; scenarios where average users need the chain are still scarce. Even in DeFi, depth and risk management still depend on external capital; the chain's architectural advantages cannot replace market cold starts. In other words, parallel execution can solve performance issues but doesn't automatically generate users and capital.

Sui's ecosystem is like a new shopping mall: the decoration is beautiful, the design理念 advanced, the subway entrance and parking lot are built, but the number of入驻 merchants is insufficient, and customer flow hasn't arrived. The foundation can temporarily subsidize rents and attract a few big brands to open, but for the mall to truly become lively, it relies on merchants making money and customers wanting to come. This is Sui's real test in the coming years.

How Can Blockchain Enter Everyday Life?

Most people's first contact with Web3 often stumbles at the most basic门槛: downloading a wallet, copying a string of incomprehensible seed phrases, then figuring out how to buy native tokens to start operating. Even after gritting one's teeth through these steps, patience is often lost due to high Gas fees, failed transactions, or long waits. The Web3 entry point has long carried a "counter-intuitive" barrier.

Sui's design, to some extent, addresses these pain points. The object model makes on-chain assets more like physical objects, easier to understand. For example, a concert ticket isn't "an increase in account balance" but a ticket with an ID that automatically shows "used" after one use; a sword in a game isn't just a number but an object that can be upgraded, damaged, or traded. This lets users perceive on-chain assets as "things" rather than "a line in a ledger" during their first contact.

Parallel execution makes operations faster. On traditional chains, transferring money and deploying a contract queue in the same line, like buying coffee and transferring property titles waiting at the same window. Sui's parallel logic is closer to reality: most transactions on different objects don't interfere, users get feedback quickly after initiating an action. For users accustomed to instant payments, this "non-lagging" feeling is crucial.

Add PTBs (Programmable Transaction Blocks), complex multi-step operations can be completed in one go, reducing the hassle of mid-way failures or repeated confirmations. Newcomers most fear clicking around only to get an error message without understanding why; PTBs hide complexity in the backend, making the user experience more like "one confirmation gets it done."

Sui also attempts to address the cold-start problem. With zkLogin, users can even log in directly with Google or Apple accounts, without first understanding the entire unfamiliar system of public/private keys and seed phrases. Sponsored transactions allow newcomers to complete their first on-chain operation without first buying tokens. This significantly lowers the barrier—at least people aren't deterred by the initial繁琐.

However, just making the experience "less bad" isn't enough. To truly migrate people on-chain, applications must emerge that Web2 cannot provide. Alipay and WeChat have polished payment experiences to be almost frictionless. To compete with such opponents, Sui must offer "must-use" reasons. For example: assets that users truly own and cannot be arbitrarily frozen; experiences of free cross-application composability—concert tickets can be bought not only through official channels but also traded on secondary markets, even bundled into collections and displayed alongside virtual items from games; game items no longer locked in a specific manufacturer's server but transferable between different games. Such experiences are what Web2 cannot do and what Sui needs to produce as killer use cases.

From a macro perspective, Sui indeed offers a set of answers different from its predecessors: it turns assets from balances into objects, allows parallel transactions, bakes security into language rules, and uses distributed scaling instead of hardware stacking. In its ecosystem, it attempts to land these理念逐步 through DeFi projects like DeepBook, Cetus, Scallop, onboarding designs like zkLogin and sponsored transactions, standardization attempts like Kiosk, and explorations in链游.

But the challenges it faces cannot be ignored. The object model is割裂 from the ERC world, requiring extra cost for interoperability; parallel execution still faces bottlenecks with hotspot objects; Move's learning curve and ecosystem size limit developer migration speed; distributed scaling remains unvalidated at large scale; the application ecosystem still relies on subsidies, and truly daily scenarios haven't emerged.

Therefore, if Sui represents an exploration of "first principles," its greatest value lies in offering a different path: not patching up the Ethereum framework but重新问了 the most basic questions and attempting to provide new answers. How far this set of answers can go still requires the combined test of time, ecosystem, policy, and market.