Mysten Labs' Sui announced that the Sui mainnet will go live on May 3, 2023.<tweet-embed url="https://twitter.com/SuiNetwork/status/1648811569541963779"></tweet-embed>
Since launching its incentivized testnet in July 2022, Sui has grown exponentially in both users and applications, with hundreds of dapps building on the Sui Network. Find out how Sui works, and how it plans to allocate its token to the community.
<h2 id="header-0">Introduction</h2>
In late 2021, as Meta began to wind down their efforts on the <a href="https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/facebook-libra/" rel="noopener noreferrer">Diem</a> project, two new teams emerged looking to start their own blockchain projects with their experience at Meta. Built on <a href="https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/move-programming-language" rel="noopener noreferrer">Move</a>, an innovative <a href="https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/rust" rel="noopener noreferrer">Rust</a>-based programming language designed at Meta, these two teams were Aptos Labs and Mysten Labs.
<img src="https://academy-public.coinmarketcap.com/optimized-uploads/cf5b43e93e42467e9ee389d2987ac701.png">
Source: Diem website (<a href="https://www.diem.com/en-us/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">link</a>)
Aptos Labs founded the <a href="https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/aptos/" rel="noopener noreferrer">Aptos</a> blockchain, a <a href="https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/layer-1-blockchain" rel="noopener noreferrer">Layer-1</a> chain looking to bring the benefits of decentralization to the masses. Aptos was the first to reach <a href="https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/mainnet" rel="noopener noreferrer">mainnet</a> in October 2022, surprising many early users with a sizable <a href="https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/airdrop" rel="noopener noreferrer">airdrop</a>. While this airdrop ignited a wave of airdrop farmers, the sentiment was quickly dampened not long after, with the collapse of FTX.
Five months on and several waves of Sui <a href="https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/testnet" rel="noopener noreferrer">testnets</a> later, airdrop rumors around the Sui token began to surface again. This was heightened against the backdrop of the <a href="https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-arbitrum-airdrop" rel="noopener noreferrer">Arbitrum airdrop</a> which rewarded many early users of the chain. Much like Arbitrum, the Mysten Labs team had also enjoyed large fundraises, most notably raising $336 million in two funding rounds in 2022. However, these airdrop rumors had always been shut down by the Sui team, although this did little to quell the speculation.
<img src="https://academy-public.coinmarketcap.com/optimized-uploads/41abda8779574f2db3edb034dfbaa982.png">
Source: Adeniyi Abiodun’s Twitter (<a href="https://twitter.com/EmanAbio/status/1645183702224506881" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">link</a>)
However, true to their word, the Mysten Labs team recently announced the “SUI Token Community Access Program” as a unique way to reward early contributors and users as well as officially conduct their public <a href="https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/token-sale" rel="noopener noreferrer">token sale</a>.
<h2 id="header-1">What Is Sui?</h2>
Sui is a Layer-1 <a href="https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/delegated-proof-of-stake-dpos" rel="noopener noreferrer">delegated Proof-of-Stake</a> (dPoS) blockchain, built on Sui Move, a modified version of the Move programming language used at Meta. Move was designed originally in 2018, and as such, was not designed with <a href="https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/non-fungible-token" rel="noopener noreferrer">NFTs</a> in mind, which made certain NFT-specific features difficult to implement.
Sui Move aimed to fix that, by building on the original Move design. Sui Move is centered around “objects,'' unlike most other blockchain programming languages like Solidity, which are built around “accounts”. This makes it much more intuitive to code assets in Move, especially for gaming and NFTs.
Additionally, objects on Sui are classified as either “owned” or “shared”. Shared objects can be modified or interacted with by more than one user, within the limitations of <a href="https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/smart-contract" rel="noopener noreferrer">smart contracts</a> and restrictions, whereas owned objects can only be modified by a single user.
<img src="https://academy-public.coinmarketcap.com/optimized-uploads/bc0526ff8c434abfb313409ed8c1bb2b.png">
Source: Sui
Since owned objects can only be modified by one user, transactions involving owned objects are independent and can be executed in parallel with other independent transactions. This allows independent transactions to bypass <a href="https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/consensus" rel="noopener noreferrer">consensus</a> as well, achieving low <a href="https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/network-latency" rel="noopener noreferrer">latency</a> and fast finality. This allows Sui to sidestep the <a href="https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/throughput" rel="noopener noreferrer">throughput</a> bottleneck on <a href="https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum/" rel="noopener noreferrer">Ethereum</a> and other <a href="https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/ethereum-virtual-machine-evm" rel="noopener noreferrer">Ethereum Virtual Machine</a> (EVM) chains due to their sequential processing.
In fact, one of Sui’s focuses is in the gaming realm. With object-oriented programming using Sui Move as well as low latency, fast finality transactions, Sui could potentially provide game-changing improvements to the Web3 gaming space.
<img src="https://academy-public.coinmarketcap.com/optimized-uploads/47645a38ebbd45fab577acf40e22995e.png">
Source: Sui Website (<a href="https://sui.io/use-cases" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">link</a>)
<h2 id="header-2">Sui Token Community Access Program</h2>
The Sui Token Community Access Program is Mysten Labs’ way of distributing the Sui token to as many community members as possible, and to reward early contributors and users of the network. It is split into three segments: Retrospective Awards, the Recognition Sale and the General Sale.
<h2 id="header-3">Retrospective Awards</h2>
The Retrospective Awards aim to reward early contributors and users of Sui through Sui token grants, which will be subjected to a lockup. This category is further split into two sub-categories: Competition Winners from Capy Holidays and Champions.
Capy Holidays was a competition run by the Mysten Labs team during Wave 1 of Sui’s Devnet, where users could breed Capys, which were represented using NFTs. These Capys could be customized using accessories and backgrounds which were dropped during the event. Users posted their Capys to Twitter, along with a backstory for them. Capys that were most “liked” or had interesting designs and backstories were selected as winners. Users in this category will receive a Sui token grant as their prize, subjected to a one-year lockup.
<img src="https://academy-public.coinmarketcap.com/optimized-uploads/3fff5eddf9494831984acb11da3f0d3b.png">
Source: Sui Blog (<a href="https://blog.sui.io/capy-holidays/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">link</a>)
Champions refer to early contributors to the network. This includes testors, moderators, organizers of Sui Builder Houses or events, and more. This group will also receive a retrospective award of Sui tokens, which is also subject to a lockup.
<h2 id="header-4">Recognition Sale</h2>
The Recognition Sale rewards the last group of early supporters, who are those who have simply been active in the Sui Discord, actively sharing suggestions, innovations, and interacting with projects and community members. All selected users in this category must have joined the Sui Discord before 1st February 2023. Users in this category will be granted a special price for the Sui token sale of USD 0.03 per token, with a maximum purchase of 1,500 SUI. This sale will be conducted on either of the supported exchanges, OKX, Kucoin, or Bybit.
<h2 id="header-5">General Sale</h2>
On April 23, the public token sale, known as the “General Sale”, will be open to the public via two <a href="https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/centralized-exchange-cex" rel="noopener noreferrer">centralized exchanges</a> (CEX): OKX and Kucoin. All interested participants will have to complete the <a href="https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/kyc" rel="noopener noreferrer">Know-Your-Customer</a> (KYC) process on their chosen exchange before April 23 to qualify.
As with most public token sales, these are lottery-based sales in which allocation is not guaranteed. Number of tickets will be determined by the respective CEX, with Kucoin using average account balances of selected tokens while OKX is using a <a href="https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/snapshot" rel="noopener noreferrer">snapshot</a> of users’ balance of their native token, <a href="https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/okb/" rel="noopener noreferrer">OKB</a>. While users can obtain more than one ticket for the draw, on all of the exchanges, each user can only have one winning ticket, which allows them to purchase 10,000 SUI tokens at a price of USD 0.1 per token.
<img src="https://academy-public.coinmarketcap.com/optimized-uploads/bd2ab03d0c694121be4e565df320e24a.png">
Source: Kucoin (<a href="https://www.kucoin.com/news/en-announcement-of-sui-token-sale-on-kucoin-spotlight" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">link</a>)
These tokens will then be unlocked over a 12 month period, with 1/13 of the allocation being released on the day of Sui’s mainnet launch. The remaining amount will be released every month until the allocation is fully unlocked.

Sui To Launch Token and Mainnet: What You Need To Know

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