The Block: Mysten Labs' Sui activates mainnet, entering competitive Layer 1 space

Sui launched its mainnet, ending a multi-year development process for the newest Layer 1 blockchain in the crypto arena.

The network went live according to an update from the project's Discord server that was made at 11:30 UTC, referencing a genesis blob . With the mainnet release, Sui's native asset will shortly be available for trading on various exchanges, such as Binance, OKX, Bybit, and Kucoin.

Sui enters a competitive landscape of high-performance Layer 1 blockchains, including Solana, Aptos and Sei. The Sui team asserts that more than 200 decentralized applications, encompassing NFTs, DeFi, social media, and gaming, are set to go live on the network in the coming weeks.

Mysten Labs, the developer of Sui, raised $300 million in a September 2022 funding round, valuing the project at over $2 billion last year. The Series B round was led by FTX Ventures, the venture arm of Sam Bankman-Fried's collapsed crypto exchange FTX. Just this month, the now-bankrupt FTX sold its stake in Mysten Labs for $96 million.

What is Sui? Sui is a highly scalable blockchain designed to support decentralized applications with block finality of less than half a second. Sui achieved a throughput rate of more than 300,000 transactions per second (TPS) with 100 validators on testnet, the team shared . It's the second blockchain to launch from the two Move programming language spinoffs of Meta's Diem project, with Aptos — which launched in October 2022 — being the first.

The proof-of-stake network utilizes Narwhal and Bullshark , two high-throughput mempool and consensus engines developed by Mysten Labs. These engines represent the state of the art in terms of performance. "Sui is horizontally scalable to support a wide range of application development with unrivaled speed at low cost and latency. It can take advantage of more machines per validator to increase its performance," a spokesperson for Sui told The Block.

Sui has a focus on offering a user-friendly experience for smart contract developers while emphasizing composability, according to the team.

SUI/USDT chart via TradingView

Not long after Mysten Labs' Sui blockchain launched its mainnet, the platform's native token was listed for trading on various exchanges. The token initially traded at over $2.1; however, it has since experienced a nearly 40% decline, settling at around $1.25 at the time of writing.

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